So I've been camping...

[marthamoo]

...anyone wanna buy a tent ?

Things I have learned:

The Cons

1. Do not pitch your tent near the children's playground. In fact, hide your children when you arrive, deny their existence and ask for a spot on the "Quiet Field" not the "Family Field." Do not let your children know the playground exists - you will spend all your time keeping an eye on them there and intervening in scraps between other peoples' kids (said people busy drinking beer in their awnings). Do not think playground will go quite after dark - beer drinking parents give their children torches.

2. Beware noisy gangs of Liverpudlians pitching gazebos right by your tent. They had 3 sleeping tents and one "party" tent - in which they carried on 'til 2am, very noisily. I ended up shouting like a harridan at 1.30 in the morning (and I really don't shout in public) and we reported them to site management the next day but by that time the damage was done and we were all like the walking dead.

3. There are tents with sewn in groundsheets and tents without. I didn't realise this - I thought all modern tents had sewn in groundsheets. Ours doesn't. It has big gaps round the bottom and creepy crawlies can get in. I'm not a big fan of creepy crawlies.

4. Spousal snoring which you can sleep through at home seems ten times louder in a tent. Everyone else's husband snores too.

Pros

1. The kids loved it - despite the lack of sleep on the first night.

2. I liked the drinking wine after the kids had gone to bed bit (and whoever said bring a bucket to wee in - good advice )

3. Sunday morning, after more sleep, sun shining, and cooking sausages for breakfast I thought "yeah...I could like this...."

But I definitely need a tent with a sewn in groundsheet. Now how to break the news to dh ?

LOL - the one thing about camping is that it's always interesting.

Try the Outer Hebrides for peace and quiety and plenty of space for the kids to run wild.

Beaches are glorious too shame about the icey water

been there

Sorry you got a noisy campsite, it can put a real crimp on things.

Glad you found the bucket useful!

I have sohouted before now to get people to shut up. If it helps sites in France tend to be stricter about 'quiet time', and tend to be quiet from 11.00 onwards. We now let our kids stay up later and get a lie in.

If you want a sewn in, I'd go for a Outwell Montana....they look fab!

Will you go again?

Oh we'll definitely go again - just be a bit more circumspect when choosing our site and tent location. But there is no way I can tell dh I want a different tent. How well do 2nd hand (only used once!) tents go on ebay ?

Ask for recomendation for a quiet site from UK capsite....mind you it only needs one drunken group to spoil things. I think that ,in general, the samller the ite, the quieter.

They tend to go quite well, inpart because people don't seem to know how much they cost new!

moo, the one we go to in the Dales - Howgill Lodge - is lovely and quiet, no amusements except a tiny shop! Is that too far for you?

The top pic shows the big bottom field which is fab for big groups - and has an adjacent football pitch - but can be noisier than the rest of the site, which is v peaceful. There is usually lots of space for kids to run about and they tend to mix pretty well.

Which site did you go to marthamoo?

We go to a nice one in Anglesey, go for 'posh' ones - and what sort of creepy crawlies did you see? We only encountered flying 'things' which get in through the door anyway!

(am a little biased as we have the same tent as hmb!)

We went to Wrexham - Plassey Leisure Park. It was a huge site so I expected it to be busy. Not really our cup of tea but it had to be near enough to get to after school on Friday and get the tent up before dark That place looks lovely Jan - too far for a weekend but I'll bear it in mind for future dates. I'd like to go to Anglesea too, haven't been since I was a little girl. Dh reckons we can cobble together some sort of skirt for the gappy bits with extra groundsheets - it was only daddy long legses, which don't freak me out too much, lucycat, but if you were in there in the summer with a light on - it would fill up with moths I reckon. And moths turn me into a gibbering wreck. You can keep the door closed, but big old gaps round the sides - ugh!

if you get a huge groundsheet it will go up the insides of the walls of the tent for a few inches and that cuts out draughts

quiet sites are best - except when you are the noisy ones. we went to a gorgeous quiet site 2 weekends ago (Wasdale head in the Lakes) and it was lovely except wherever I was on the campsite, I could hear the not so dulcet tones of my 3 children yelling away. I did feel sorry for all the quiet campers around us.

But how could anyone object to the sounds of happy children playing, Fennel ?

did you go to mersea island by any chance, we did and it was just as you described-hell on wheels-we left early and consider ourselves to be seasoned pros when it comes to camping. Lesson learned? only camp in the south of france-far more civilised.

martha - im from liverpool and we arent all like that!!!

biglips - I know that

there are lots of quiet campsites in north wales and the lakes, also in the peaks and yorkshire. choose ones which take only tents (eg Edale in the Peaks) - they tend to be much more low key. also the ones with fewest facilities are quietest. avoid ones with clubs and playgrounds if you don't want noise. avoid anything near Rhyl!

we go to one near Colwyn bay which has always been lovely and quiet except for last time when it was really noisy - that was a bank holiday though - also avoid bank holidays for noise and crowds.

One site that we liked was this one It was well kept and the pitches were flat yeh! Not cheap, but you do generally get what you pay for!

B&Q sell huge 'tarps' that a lot of people put under their SIG to stop them from getting muddy - perhaps one of these would fill in your gaps!

Don't forget The Quiet Site - ssshhhh.

Just right!

(Local attractions linked, including The Pencil Museum which always makes me want to laugh!)

Janh, that's bizarre - i have been to a very noisy campsite at that same place (Watermillock). perhaps there are twin adjoining sites, noisy and quiet! Ours wasn't called the Quiet site.

Was it Cove , Fennel? It doesn't look noisy (iyswim!)

I haven't been to the Quiet Site yet but the guy who runs it is a very nice occasional MNer so I promote it when I get the chance!

it looks strangely similar but different - it's been several years, maybe the same site has been taken over and changed in this time. gone from noisy to quiet!

marthamoo that has made me laugh so much! I went camping for the first time a couple of weeks ago and agree with most of what you said. However I didn't have a bucket - just my sons portable fold down travel potty (with very noisy plastic bag lining - which let me tell you was ear splitting at 2am when I did the biggest wee in the world in it in the dark not knowing if I was about to overflow or not).

OMG

Its amazing the things you will do to avoid putting on your coat and shoes and crossing the campsite in the wee small hours

I coulnd't we had a virtual stranger sleeping in our 'salon' area of the tent!

we have the outwell montanna 6 with sewn in ground sheet - it is great- so far no creepy crawlies for us!- or midges due to all the different sheets etc.

Wasdale head is situated with fantastic views but we stayed at Nether Wasdale, where there was a fabby playground for the little campers.

sorry forgot to add - whilst at Nether Wasdale a party of 5 tents with a gazebo/badminton net etc got chucked of the site on the sunday morning due to their noise and the owners said that they would make sure that they never camped anywhere in that valley again (apparnatly they have a little forum between the campsites) before they had even left the site the owner had emailed all other sites just in case!!!

Wherever we have stayed (apart from there) this year (6 times) and it is our first camping year, the sites have all been amazingly quiet after 10.30pm

Thanks muchly for all these suggestions of quiet campsites! I will bear them all in mind for next summer. You were right, Jan - September was brave for our first camping trip - it was jolly chilly in the morning (though we all wore socks and vests and thick 'jamas in our sleeping bags and weren't cold at all).

I think a large groundsheet/tarpaulin might work - it's only the bedroom areas that don't have mud flaps and thus have gaps round (the bedroom bits sort of hang inside the flysheet and are fully sealed - but round them is open to the outside, iyswim). If we pitch on a groundsheet and tuck it up between the outer and the inner tent I think that might work. Plus it would stop the tent groundsheets getting so muddy.

I really do think we should have a camping topic - it would make it easier to access all this fab advice under one topic heading