Times & Star

How to enjoy the great outdoors – in your tent

By VivienneCrow

Last updated 03:00, Monday, 19 May 2008

Top tips from how to pick the right sleeping bag to where to buy an eight-berth tent for just £219

Blissful: A sunny morning and you can almost smell the dew-dampened grass and the breakfast sausages sizzling across the campsite

IT’S SPRING, the time of year when the thoughts of every red-blooded male – and female – turn to… camping.

Cooking up a treat on the stove, sitting and watching the sun go down with a glass of beer, waking to the sound of birdsong and throwing open the tent flap to reveal a clear, sunny morning… Ah! You can almost smell the dew-dampened grass and the breakfast sausages sizzling all across the campsite.

Unless, that is, you’ve never had the pleasure of camping. In which case, it’s time to give it a try.

The first thing you need to consider if you’re a camping virgin is what sort of tent you should buy. The two most important considerations are: how many people the tent is intended for; and how the tent will be carried. If you’re backpacking and are going to be carrying the tent, it’ll need to be lightweight. This will inevitably mean a smaller, cosier living space; if you want something you can stand up in, you’ll need transport.

Emma Devine, who runs the Carlisle Camping Centre in Carlisle with her partner Stephen Prince, says that tents make for a cheap holiday option.

“We sell a huge, eight-man family tent for £219 and you can get a lot of holidays out of that,” she says.

“Although a lot of people still have their main holiday abroad, more and more people are choosing to spend weekends camping.

“It’s because there’s so much freedom, especially if you’ve got a family - the kids can be out playing all day.”

It’s always a good idea to practise putting your new tent up in your garden before you go camping proper. There’s nothing worse than arriving at a campsite just as the light is fading and then having to learn how to erect your shelter by reading a complicated instruction booklet by torchlight.

Next, there’s the sleeping bag. These are rated for different seasons – a one-season bag is good only for warm weather; at the other extreme, a four-season bag is suitable for cold winter nights.

Basically, there are two types of sleeping bag: down-filled bags are lighter, but lose their insulating properties when wet; bags with synthetic fills, on the other hand, are significantly cheaper.

However good your sleeping bag is, you will need a sleeping mat to prevent loss of body heat to the ground – and to provide cushioning.

Most campers these days have either self-inflating mattresses or closed cell foam mats. The latter are lighter and cheaper (as little as £5) – so you’ll often see them tied to rucksacks as hikers set off on multi-day walking trips.

The self-inflatables, on the other hand, provide better cushioning and better insulation, but you’re unlikely to find a good one for less than £25.

Stoves, like tents, come in all shapes and sizes, and to suit all budgets. When choosing a stove, the three most important things to consider are:

Size and weight – a big stove is fine if you are camping out of a car but if you are carrying your gear in a rucksack, it will need to be light and compact
Stability - if you have young children, make sure the stove cannot be easily knocked over
Fuel type – gas is clean and efficient, and can be easily controlled in terms of the level of heat you require; petrol is efficient and easily accessible, but the stoves can often by fiddly to use; meths is simple, quiet and reliable, but is not as efficient as other fuels.

So, you’ve got your basics. What else will you need?

Other essential items include cooking and eating utensils, matches to light your stove if it’s not self-igniting, a torch, spare batteries and, at certain times of the year, insect repellant. Additional luxuries, depending on the amount of space available to you, include a small, foldaway table with chairs, self-inflating pillows (or you can simply bundle your clothes up and put them under your head) and a lamp.

Once you’ve found a campsite, choose an area that is as flat as possible but avoid ground that could flood. If you end up on a slope, sleep parallel with the slope, so that your head is higher than your feet.

Before pitching your tent, remove stones and anything else that might damage the groundsheet or give you an uncomfortable sleeping surface.

It is better not to pitch under trees, especially in windy conditions. They will also drip on to the canvas long after it has stopped raining – which can be extremely annoying when you are trying to get to sleep.

So, you’ve got your tent up, you’ve cooked your first meal on your new stove and now it’s time for your first night under canvas. You snuggle down into your sleeping bag, turn off the torch… But what’s that noise? It sounds like a grizzly bear, but you’re on a Cumbrian campsite, not in the wilds of Canada. In which case, it’ll be the snorer in the next tent. Did you remember to pack the ear-plugs?

FACT FILE