can you use a cool box instead of a fridge for very basic camping...

[mum2samandalex]

just wondering whether it will keep your milk. cheese, butter and maybe bacon fresh so we can do our own breakfast and maybe lunch.

we do this for short trips. Plus lots of sites have somewhere where you can refreeze iceblocks.

until last year we didn't have a fridge, even then it only works in the car or when we have EHU (which will be a first in July).

we just by fresh a lot, but we like to do that anyway- for us finding a good fishmongers or whatever is part of the whole thing

As aboput iceblocks yes, and take plenty- most sites do them now

I picked up a good tip on ukcs. If you are taking a cool box (with freezer blocks or ice from the supermarket) take some bubble wrap with you. Push it over/around the food you want to keep cool so you are not chilling the top wasted space of the cool box.

All the sites I've been on have put the blocks in the freezer for a small fee so you need two sets so you can swap them over every day. That should be enough to keep milk etc fresh. Even better with the bubble-wrap, I'm definitely going to pinch that idea!

You may want to make your blocks easy to identify if you want to be sure of getting the same ones back (ours are nice big flat ones so I don't want to be lumbered with the squarer chunky ones). Some people put them in coloured carrier bags, we wrap multi-coloured elastic bands round them.

We do the freezer block swap at our regular site, I find I have to do it twice a day though, maybe my coolbox is crap. We don't have to pay, and have our son's name written on all out packs in marker.

We I was little we used to go away in a static caravan for 6 weeks every summer and my mum just used to keep milk and butter in a bucket of cold water under the caravan.

Liking the bubble wrap tip have added 'bubble wrap' to my already extensive list. Will double as a child entertainer for a rainy day.

Lol, the site we usually go to has a stream running through it. If you look along the bank on a warm summer evening you will see a row of wine bottles on lengths of string dangling from the adjacent tents/caravans into the cold water .

Our cool box didn't quite last the weekend but it was very very hot and DH annoyingly left it in full sun for half of one day. Even so the milk at the bottom was ok, it was just the butter on the top that melted over everything.
I have heard good things about the Coleman Extreme cool box though so I would like one of those as we are not planning on EHU.....for now.....

We don't use either. Milk's the only thing we find which tends to go off quickly, and if you buy milk from the campsite or local shop in smallish quantities, you don't have a problem. also you can use UHT milk if you don't mind the taste.

One thing we do is take frozen food which will take a day to defrost, typically, and put that in with the dairy and other food which benefits from keeping cool.

we don't take meat so that's not an issue, but even if you normally eat meat, if you take veggie sausages etc there is less problem about keeping them cool.

dh cools wine in a wet sock hung from a tree

It works very well

We use a cool bag when we aren't doing ehu. and just change the blocks regularly. We take the second nights dinner frozen as well which acts as a cool block. If we can't change blocks then we buy something frozen from a supermarket when out shopping

in addition to ice packs we use plastic milk bottles filled with water and frozen. They last a bit longer. I second taking frozen food - freeze a home made casserole and you have an easy meal!

Surprisingly a fresh fruit salad will freeze too tho it obviously isn't as nice but again - a healthy easy pud which keeps the box cool.