Keeping things cool

[Borris]

First time camping for 5 nights in August, just me and dd (in our tent - will be other families there too)

No electricity hook up

Was planning on lots of tins, uht milk, pasta and pesto etc.

Is it worth taking a cool box. One with freezer packs in? How long do they keep cool?

And the price varies hugely -£10 for one in Asda to £50 or even £100.

What should I look out for. And do you get what you pay for?

Thanks

I camped for years using a £7 cool box from Asda. I bought 2 lots of ice packs, one to use in the cool box and one in the freezer at the campsite. It worked fine. Just keep the cool box in the shade and swap over the blocks each day. We right our name and postcode in sharpie on the ice blocks too.

Freeze meat like sausage and burgers and wine bags (from inside wine box) and you have extra ice packs!

I find ice packs take up a lot of space. Cool boxes are quite small on inside.

Probably best to bring minimum fridge stuff and buy day to day.

I always have a separate cool box for booze 😉

The electric cool boxes are ok ( we have one) but make an annoying buzzing sound and some sites charge up to a tenner extra for electric and just not worth it for cool box and a light. You can charge phone's in car. Also electric pitches often more regimented and next to all the caravans/motorhomes lined up.

If there’s a stream nearby, we tend to double bag cheese milk etc and put it securely in there. I understand that might not be what you’re after though

Oh yeah I always freeze the meat and milk and I usually cook a chilli and freeze that too and eat it the first night.

Good ideas here. So maybe I’ll go for a cheap coolbox. I like the idea of frozen wine ice packs and starting with whatever I can take frozen

Lots of campsites have communal fridges and freezers you can use. Usually the smaller rustic sites rather than the big ones. We've been to ones that even had a communal microwave.

You do get what you pay for and a cheap box or bag won’t keep things actually cold for longer than a day, probably, even with refreshing the ice packs. So plan accordingly.

You do get what you pay for. We have got a Coleman Extreme coolbox and it was expensive (maybe £80-odd), but we used it on a recent camping trip. The campsite had a freezer you could use to re-freeze ice packs. The coolbox kept our stuff cold (some bottles of water still frozen) all week. I think that without replacing the ice packs it can last for up to 5 days, depending on the conditions (you have to pre-chill it by putting ice packs in it a couple of days before you go).

As others have said if you freeze anything that you sensibly can then they will help to keep the other contents cold.

Milk will freeze (although I don't mind Uht) grated cheese wouldn't need defrosting before using. Something like a Bolognaise would reheat even if still partly frozen. Burgers are usually fine cooked from frozen, sausages would need to be thawed, cartons of juice will be fine.

With a decent cool box things will definitely be fine for three days and then you will just need restock.