The Road to Sidmouth (part 2): The Camping Challenge

I'll admit that I haven't been camping in a long time. B is similarly (in)experienced.

So we've got a lot to do before spending a week at the Sidmouth campsite. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that we will be a lot better off by planning and preparing, and we will suffer if we just try to wing it on the day.

We're transporting almost everything on the train with us so we can't just overpack for every eventuality either. So, I've been looking at the ultralight movement for ideas so we don't get weighed down by our own supplies.

One thing working to our advantage is that we can afford to throw a bit of money and a bit of makery at the problem. So this is what we've done to get ready

Buy a tent

Trading off weight against ease of setting up, we picked one of the Decathlon Arpenaz 3-person tents. The concept of a blackout tent is new to me but we chose this one for a few reasons:

• B doesn't like being woken up by the sun
• If there's a remote chance of anyone suffering migranes, this is a ready-made dark space
• We need it to stay cool as it's blisteringly hot at the moment and we need some actual sleep.
• We need it to stay cool because we've got nowhere else to store our food or stuff.

Buy something to sit on

A week of sitting on the ground is likely to be unpleasant. I got a posh chair, B got a cheap one and each of us thinks that our own is better. Let's see who wins.

Buy a camping stove

Actually, we got a Jetboil.

Ah the Jetboil, the Macbook of camping stoves. With its neoprene sleeve and colour changing logo. It boils water. It boils water damn well and it boils waer damn fast. Just don't ask it to do anything else.

This thing cost twice as much as the tent. It cost more than anything else coming on the trip (with the exception of B's fancy new headphones). But we are a couple of compulsive tea drinkers and we couldn't avoid getting something optimised for boiling water. Cue the constant (almot instant) mobile supply of tea.

This has made it quite fun planning meals. We have no ability to keep chilled food and need to keep things light and compact. Our only cooking facility is boiling water. Dehydrated food party it is!

I'll go into more detail about food planning and other  makery in another post, but for now you need to know that we're going to play to the Jetboil's strengths, and our love of laziness by embracing dehydrated backpacking meals.

Bye,

K

Buying supplies