Basecamp and family camping

When weight stops being the constraint, three other things take over: vehicle volume, setup time, and what happens when it rains for two days.

Car camping is a different optimisation problem#

Backpacking optimises grams. Car camping optimises boot space, the time between arriving and having a working camp, and resilience to weather. The gear that wins is often the opposite of what wins on a trail: a heavy chair is fine, a heavy tent that pitches in the dark in ten minutes is better than a light one that does not.

Three things do most of the work.

A covered space that is not the tent. A tarp or shelter over the cooking and sitting area is the single highest-value item after the tent itself, because it is the difference between a rainy weekend that continues and one that ends early.

Boxes that stay packed. A kitchen box, a shelter box and a comfort box that live loaded between trips remove almost all of the forgotten-item failures, and they make the pack-up on Sunday a ten minute job.

Sleep that is actually warm. An air bed with no insulation under it is cold below about 12 degrees C, and a camp cot is colder still, because air moves freely underneath. This is the most common reason people decide they dislike camping.

Where to start#

Frequently asked questions#

What size tent for a family of four?#

Look for roughly 6 to 8 square metres of floor if packs and duffels sleep inside, which usually means a tent rated for five or six people. Rated capacity assumes bodies only. The tent size calculator turns your actual group into a floor area target.

How much water do we need per person per day?#

Around 5 litres per person per day covers drinking, cooking and washing up at a site without a tap. Sites with drinking water on tap change the question to how much you want to carry from the tap to the pitch, which is usually a 10 litre container and a smaller jug.

Is an air bed warm enough?#

Not on its own below about 12 degrees C. An uninsulated air bed is a large volume of circulating air under your body. A closed cell foam mat or a wool blanket between you and the air bed fixes it for very little money.

How do we keep children warm at night?#

A bag sized for the child rather than an adult bag, an insulated mat under them, dry clothes to sleep in and a hat. Small bodies lose heat faster than adults for their size, which is covered in camping with young children.

Every guide in basecamp & family camping

  1. 01The car camping checklist, and how to build one you trustA car camping list only works with a system behind it: boxes that stay packed, a water figure that holds up, a loading order, and a restock habit.Pack boxes that stay packed, then check the list
  2. 02Camping with young children, without buying twiceChildren lose heat faster than adults, so a family trip is decided by the sleep setup, not the tent: age-banded planning, a two trip rule and a safety routine.Fix sleep first, buy in two stages, rehearse in the garden
  3. 03Gear for a first camping trip: buy, borrow or leave at homeThe honest minimum for a first night outdoors, what to borrow instead of buying, a category by category verdict, and the shakedown night to run first.Buy the sleep system, borrow almost everything else
  4. 04Camp comfort: chairs, tables, shade and what is worth the spaceWhich chairs, tables, tarps and lights earn their place in a car boot, ranked by comfort per litre packed, plus the tarp pitching rules that hold in wind and rain.Rank comfort per litre of boot, and pitch the tarp first
  5. 05Camping in the rain: the routines that keep a trip aliveA rain arrival routine, a wet and dry zone layout for a family tent, and what to do with every category of soaked gear overnight so a wet weekend still works.Cover the working area first, then hold the dry line

Calculators for this topic

Cooler ice calculatorHow much ice to buy, and how long it survives in your cooler, in your weather.Tent size calculatorTent capacity numbers describe bodies laid side by side with nothing else inside.Camp food weight calculatorTurns days, people and effort into calories, then into the grams that land in your pack.