Christmas is coming ... and we'd love Father Christmas to bring us a new cool box

[Annner]

Only question is, which type?

I'm attracted by the plug into the car types, but I'm flummoxed as to how they actually work - do you have the darn thing running constantly, or do you cool it down and then switch it off for a while? Don't they drain the battery completely? Do you use them with cool blocks as well? What happens at night when it gets cold?

Or should we go for one of those stonking Coleman ones that keep stuff cool for up to five days? Does that assume that you aren't actually going to open it at all?

Our UK camping is mainly weekends, with the odd three-nighter. I'm a bit fed up of the cool box being mainly cool blocks, and having to remember to change them all the time. Oh, and we don't actually own one yet, as we have been borrowing my mother's.

Over to you, oh wise campers.

Bumping for you.

I don't know abut the electric one but have one of the Igloo ones. It is er rather on the large size and we've only used it once when we were going to France and wanted to take some frozen food with us.

Filled it with a bag of ice and a couple of litre plastic bottles filled with water and frozen, left over night then put in the food and another bag of ice. Food was in there for about 24 hours and still really frozen.

Will you have electricity on site? we have a cool box type that we bought from Lidl last eyar to replace our old one and it comes with a plug attched, but thenagain we do ahve an ehu so it's not a problem.

It all depends on your budget and how much room you have in the car!

We have one that you can plug into electricity, which we use only for camping, but then we always stay at sites with electricity.

I bought a coleman xtreme 6-day cooler last year. Expensive (£60) from ebay shop (sorry can't remember seller) but fab. It is huge though & has a pull along handle & wheels - kept everything for a party of 3 adults/6dcs for 4 days.
fill up, then fill around yr food with ice cubes (bags from shop for about a quid) & you're good to go.. for a long weekend, or longer if you replace the ice. It has a drainage hole so you can let the water out without emptying it/tipping it up.

One word of warning though, if you have anything in cardboard (burgers/fish fingers etc.) make sure you have a couple of well sealing boxes to keep them in, so packaging doesn't get soggy - from experience on 1st trip! A very small price to pay though, if you don't have electric hook up, & don't want to kill your car batter with electric cool box