How NOT to camp!

[Mysterian]

What shouldn't you do when camping?

Post your biggest mistakes that you've personally made.

One camp I made a few errors:

I should have positioned my tent so the ends were facing the way the winds could come from. It was in a Scottish loch valley with mountains either side so there were only 2 directions for it to come, but I wanted a better view.

I shouldn't have put my tent on a bit of land sticking out into the loch where the wind would get me.

I should have paid more attention to the weather forecast and given up when told the wind would be 55-60 mph gusts.

Do not pitch your tent on a tidal shore!

(not me but there is a piece of shore opposite my house which has short sea grass growing so it looks like a tiny piece of park by the sea, apart from the fact that many passers by use it as a toilet, it often floods. We have warned a few campers and rescued more the following morning. Some escape and have a lovely experience but mostly it is to be avoided!)

Taking a wash in a mountain stream running past the campsite. Turns out mountain streams, though romantic, run at 173 degrees below freezing. I screamed.

Forgot my camping chair 3 camps in a row. I now have a lot of cheap camping chairs I had to get as emergency purchases.

Camp on top of a cliff in exmoor! This was us this year and we had to leave early.

Don’t pitch in a dip- if it rains you’ll wake up wet!!

If you have lots of small children do not pitch as far away as possible in case they disturb other campers. The little darlings have teeny tiny bladders and you will just walk backwards and forwards to the toilet box for HOURS.

Don't pitch next to the toilet block as you will have a constant stream of people trudging by.

Don't forget wellies if you camp in Scotland.
I now own 5 pairs as it has become somewhat of a tradition to spend the first day of holidays perusing shoe shops for wellies.
Quite a task last August when we pitched in hailstones.

..

5Zeds you need this www.amazon.co.uk/Kampa-khazi-Khazi-Portable-Toilet/dp/B001TQ5KC2/ref=asc_df_B001TQ5KC2/?hvlocphy=1002316&linkCode=df0&hvptwo&psc=1&hvnetw=g&hvadid=332204750047&hvpone&hvlocint&hvpos=1o1&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl&hvqmt&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&hvtargid=pla-706998970728&hvrand=5796643111923812712

This www.amazon.co.uk/Portable-Camping-Festival-Detachable-Outdoor/dp/B00UB2T1IE?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Or a porta potty !

Do not decide to use fairy liquid, or any other detergent, to clean mould or mud off your plastic windows or clean other bits of your tent: you will wreck the waterproofing.

For the same reason do not let your kids use bubbles (neat detergent) around your tent, and especially other people’s!

Do not camp next to a ditch in which the overflow from the toilet cabin further along the field runs. Looking at you, a certain campsite!

Please do not use big pans on suitcase stoves. It spreads the heat over the gas canister and is the cause of explosions.

Do not ever bring your cooling BBQ into the tent. The coals and ash can give off deadly CO for hours.

Can't remember exactly how he did it... But don't get a flat battery on your car (left something on/plugged in). Although through the brilliance of campsite community spirit, we got a push start, then a jump start when that failed.

Don't take Cub Scouts camping when the forecast includes blazing sun (20 degrees), pouring rain (mud fest inducing!!) and heavy frost (-3 degrees!), and then deal with 1 precious darling whose DM had not told us she had been feeling unwell (leading to throwing up explosively in the middle of the night, requiring 1 Leader to drive her and her BFF home, and finding a separate tent option for the 3rd (brand new!) Cub in their compartment - leading to all sorts of confusion in the morning), and then having to dig out cars of those sensible parents who drove right onto the field onsite to collect their darlings after the mud-fest inducing rain (when there was a perfectly fine car parking area only 100m away on gravel that no cars got stuck on). Only made worse because we were at the point where all 200 Scouts and Cubs on site walked past to get to the toilet block (1 direction) and obstacle course in trees (other direction).

Very nearly put me off going back into Scouting, that one!!

Explain very clearly to your giant dog what camping is. Then explain the difference between a dog bed and a camp bed (I get this is tricky because they look much the same). I thought it would be amazing. Our dog loves being outside and would swim and trek all day. He hates camping. He hates the tent because he doesn’t know what are wall and what are doors, he hates the open fires and he hates getting shoved off the bed.

Don’t forget your poles.

Just don't go.

(Sorry, mine was as bad as it was as Cubs are an age where they wear the same outfit for the entire weekend, whether they are too hot, too cold, too wet, too muddy....don't think of sunscreen, don't want to add more layers, decide to wear PJs at 5pm and then get them wet before bedtime.... so on top of all the weather issues, it wsa chaos.)

Our normal Cub annual camp, 6 weeks later, was a breeze compared to that!

Don't leave your rubbish from cooking supper in the porch in a flimsy binbag. At three in the morning, when the foxes are shredding the bag to get to the leftovers you will be terrified as in the silence it sounds like Grendel or a werewolf is out there!

Thankfully no tins we're in the bag, otherwise there might have been a bloodbath to clean up too! Foxes spread rubbish over quite a large area of campsite...

I would love to know where @SunnivaGunne lives though sounds wonderful (built in entertainment/amusement too! )

Don't take your great Dane who has explosive diarrhoea. I implore you.

Read the weather forecast. I can remember try to pitch a tent with DH and having to lie on it to stop it blowing away while he hammered the tent pegs. The tent did get pitched and stayed up (unlike most of the other tents that night) but we were both soaking and freezing cold by the tine it was pitched.