JustPickOneUK

As readers of this blog may know I like to go camping. This is a relatively recent phenomenon (the last few years or so) and I have been really embracing "going shopping" while on camp. Its nice to go around each others pitches to see what different pieces of equipment there are, how many ways are there to sit down, how many surfaces are there to put how many different drinking receptacles down and so on. "Ooh I love that chair", "How does that table work?", "That solar panel is cool, where did you get that?"  While on the 3 Peaks in 3 Weeks trip (Link here if you'd like to read my first post on the subject), I saw a new style of tent being put up in full for the first time.  Rather traditionally, we have always had tents with poles and I'd seen these new tents before but not one being pitched from the outset. The tent that caught my eye was a massive family tent (suitable for about 8 people I think) and it was being erected by one perso...

Back in February 2024 I decided to I decided to buy a National Trust annual pass for the family. We were visiting Bath earlier in the year and we had some ideas for the summer holidays to travel around the UK check out my blog series about our adventures called 3 peaks in 3 weeks. So with this adventuring I thought it would be a good idea to have the option of some plans for days out, culture, beauty and generally less thinking would be involved when we travel.   So what is the National Trust? For anyone outside the UK or does not know, the National Trust is an charitable organisation which looks after and manages over 500 properties, has properties all over the England and Wales of varying different styles. Houses, gardens, coastal areas, and sites of global historical interest. These are all very important sites and without organisations like the National Trust, a lot of them would have been lost to time or disrepair. What sort of place does the National Trust offer? Each locati...

 We decided to have a well deserved break. Its been a couple of weeks of travel, thinking about travel, setting up camps, explore the area, packing down camps, moving on and rinse repeat. It is a wonderful thing to do and I am loving it but we need a breather from it. So today is the day, reading books, making tea and doing not a lot. Well the weather has certainly decided that this is our only choice. It is raining. Raining HARD! The British weather has decided that we hadn't seen enough rain for the last 2 weeks (and to be fair we'd had glorious weather) and so it decided that it would give us all the rain we had missed in one day!  Any Friends fans out there will remember Joey feeling sad about living on his own and feeling home sick and looking through the glass with water in. Well that was our view for a full day. We actually loved it. We made up a new system for blocking more rain from getting into the porch area on our tent using a tarpaulin, a poncho and some bungee co...

 We made it to Scotland! Loch Lomond is famous but I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps its because it is soooo big! It is huge and takes an age to drive around it. Perhaps it is famous for its most famous residents. The midgies! Who knows? I do know it is gorgeous and well worth camping at and using as a base for other places to go.  We had two plans for this leg of the trip. Visit Ben Nevis to get our third and final peak and to go to Edinburgh. None of us had been there before and we all wanted to go, so this seemed like a no brainer. We also decided that we needed a breather from constantly being on the go. So for that reason we decided to stay here for 5 nights instead of the usual 3 nights we had been used to.  Setting up camp at Milarrochy Bay Campsite was simple enough. We booked the site the night before and decided to join the Camping and Caravanning Club to take advantage of a discount and future cheaper prices. I'll go into that in more detail in a future blog ...

 Well the first week is up and one peak down. Not too bad. Unfortunately we have a time frame to be home by and so we needed to prioritise where we were going to head next. Going north was always the idea but do we have long enough to camp for a few days in the Lake District? Get a good look at Scafell Pike and tick another peak off our list?  Well the short answer is no. Our tent is actually far too big for what we need. It is a 6 man tent for only 3 people and one of them is small. Tent manufacturers make tents and give them a guide on how big they are by saying how many people fit. 2 man, 3 man, 4 man etc. To my experience this is literal. How many adults can fit laying down shoulder to shoulder, not including any sleeping mat, bags or equipment That's the "man" description. As such my rule of thumb, and piece of advice to anyone who wants to buy a new tent, is to always buy a tent with 2 more "men" than you need. So if three people are travelling, especially...

We used the campsite WiFi to find our next location. Where we wanted to be next was Snowdonia but where? It's a huge location and did we want to be near a town or in the middle of no-where? I had found a campsite a few days before with availability right on a lake and close to a small town. Perfect! Now I am ready to "Just Pick One", I go to do it and the availability is gone! AARRGGHH! Now the indecisive one has to start all over again......did I mention AARRGGHH? Here comes my Gollum / Smeagol moment where I have an all out argument / therapy session within myself to get through the next 5 minutes. "Right calm down, it isn't that important...just breathe. It's just a campsite." "But it is the next step and I need a plan of where we are going!" "Yes but that is hours away and we can get something else. It's a national park and there are other sites." "Yeah I know that .. but which one??? I looked at loads and I liked this on...

This summer holidays we decided to go on a road trip. Not just any road trip but a camp around the UK. 3 nights here, 4 nights there, maybe a hotel overnight as a pit stop and tour the sights. This is a long tale and so I will need to break it up into bits. During this holiday we realized that it might be possible to see all three of the highest peaks in the UK. Mount Snowden in Wales, Scafell Pike in England and Ben Nevis in Scotland. Would we manage it by the end? Do you have to climb the 3 peaks to still enjoy them? Let's find out in this diary series I am calling 3 Peaks in 3 Weeks.  We began our journey on the south coast of England where we live. Car all packed with our tent, provisions, child in tow and more electrical items than we should have really and then the car wouldn't start! Why.....just why?? Thankfully we were able to get a jump start from our other car and we were off......until I had a small panic about 20 yards off the driveway when I thought I didn't l...

 The Easter holidays are an opportunity for adventure. With a young family foreign holidays are very expensive during the school holidays so many are choosing to stay home. We did the same during the last 3 days this year. It has been so wet recently but the forecast for the weekend was due to be lovely and so we packed up the car and took a punt. I'm so glad we did.  We chose to stay in Ashurst in the New Forest at the Ashurst campsite. Here is a link to the booking page if you are interested yourself.  https://www.campinginthenewforest.com/campsites/ashurst/  I like the idea of wild camping but I am not ready yet. So I do require sites with showers and toilets as a minimum. There is no WiFi, no electric hookups and no charging points at this site. But as our stay was a short one our power packs were just fine for our phones etc. The site has pitches for tents and hard standing ones for caravans and campervans alike and they also offer seasonal pitches too.  I ...

If you are like me a walk feels like a bit of a waste of time. I can walk I just don't like to go for a walk. Its boring, where am I going?, am I trying to get there in a certain time frame? So no, I don't want to go or a walk. Geocaching however, sign me up. (Phonetically Jee-Oh-Cashing). Geocaching is a global free activity you can do, even in your local area. Its like a treasure hunt using your phone or a gps device you can look up the locations of hidden in plain sight caches. Each one is put there and recorded by members of the public, so anyone can place a cache. Across the country there are caches at local churches, war memorials and historical places of interest.  They can even be dotted along your local dog walking area in trees, under bushes, clipped or dangled from fences, sign posts and under fallen leaves. They can be made of anything, a clip lock box, a small screw top tube, a bottle, a magnetic bolt, even a key safe. Our most unusual one was a key safe made to ...

After much deliberation, I decided to buy a National Trust annual pass for the family. We were visiting Bath earlier in the year and we have ideas for the summer holidays to travel around the UK and so I thought it would be a good idea to have the option of some plans for days out, culture, beauty and generally less thinking would be involved when we travel.  For anyone outside the UK or does not know, the National Trust is an charitable organisation which looks after and manages over 500 properties, gardens and land of historical or cultural interest within the UK. For example it looks after The Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, Cliveden House in Berkshire and is linked with English Heritage for Stonehenge.    The Giants Causeway Cliveden House Stonehenge   These are all very important sites and without organisations like the National Trust, a lot of them would have been lost to time or disrepair.    Each location has a place to park either on site or n...

I was always a reluctant camper. Why have a thin piece of canvas over my head, sleep on the floor and be cold and wet the whole time when there is a lovely hotel with a comfy bed, shower and toilet in the room with you and a TV? Because it's fun! My husband would say.  Back in the mid 2000's we went on a camping trip with our smallish tent around the south coast of England. The journey was fine, seeing lots of nice places and everything but we only camped once in 10 days because the weather was seriously against us. Biblical wet springs to mind. Noah may have thought about putting more provisions on the Ark if he saw it.   We decided to give it another try, given the 2 year hiatus from overseas holidays and the costs of going on one now. Camping seemed like a good alternative.  Well I said, if we are doing this then we doing this properly. I want a big tent and comfortable mattresses. So we bought this... A *Coleman Vail 6 man tent which according to tenting companie...