Expert Camping Gear Reviews & Advice
Pitch a tent at dusk on a Peak District campsite, fumble for the zip with a phone torch between your teeth, and you’ll understand why a decent LED camping lantern is the most underrated item in the boot. It turns a damp, shadowy porch into a proper room. It lets you cook, read and play … Read more
It’s 2 a.m. in a Highland glen, and something is rustling outside your tent. It isn’t the wind. In Britain you’re unlikely to be negotiating with a grizzly. But foxes, rats, mice, gulls and the odd pine marten are professional food thieves, and they find your supper by smell long before they see it. An … Read more
Picture dusk on a Pennine ridge. Drizzle is sliding in sideways, and your dinner is somewhere at the bottom of a rucksack that looks like it has been through a blender. Now picture the same evening with one tidy, weatherproof food sack for backpacking sitting on top of your kit. One of those evenings is … Read more
A food storage sack under £15 is a roll-top, waterproof or water-resistant bag that keeps camping food dry, contained and easy to hang or stash away from wildlife. It’s a small, cheap piece of kit, and it leaves room in your budget for the rest of your gear. It also stops your breakfast oats turning … Read more
An odour-proof bear bag is a food storage pouch or liner built from a scent-barrier film or bite-resistant fabric that traps cooking smells so wildlife can’t sniff out your dinner from fifty metres away. It’s the difference between a bear ambling past your tent and a bear parked outside it at 3am, and it’s exactly … Read more
A bear bag for backpacking is a lightweight, sealable food sack used to keep your food, rubbish and scented items away from wildlife overnight. Depending on the design, it is either hung from a tree branch out of reach or made from tough fabric that resists teeth and claws, replacing a heavy hard-sided canister. Now, … Read more
Let’s clear something up before you spend a single penny: there are no wild bears prowling the Lake District, and there haven’t been for roughly a thousand years. So why is “bear bag kit under £30” one of the more oddly persistent searches among UK campers? Because the phrase has quietly become shorthand for something … Read more
There’s a particular kind of misery reserved for riders who trust the wrong luggage. You roll into a services car park somewhere on the M6, soaked to the bone, and unzip your holdall to find your spare socks have taken on the texture of a wrung-out flannel. A proper dry bag for motorcycle touring exists … Read more
There’s a specific kind of dread that hits the moment your kayak rolls in a stretch of moving water: not “am I okay?”, but “is my phone okay?” Anyone who’s fished a soggy wallet or a dead phone out of a “waterproof” bag after a swim knows the feeling, and honestly, it’s an entirely avoidable … Read more
Here’s a truth every British camper learns the hard way, usually at 2am, usually in a tent that’s developed a mysterious drip: it isn’t the rain that ruins a trip, it’s what the rain gets its hands on. Your spare socks. Your sleeping bag. The phone you were relying on for the ordnance survey map. … Read more