Family camping

We spend all our family vacations camping, out of both necessity and preference. Necessity, because we have four kids, and there’s no way we can afford three weeks in high season in a hotel. Preference, because both my wife and I grew up this way.

We’ve come to view camping as a skill, and that’s what I want to talk about today. When you search YouTube for camping advice, the videos you find fall into two broad categories: Folks telling you how to find the best 100.000€ RV, and folks telling you how to survive in the forest with nothing but a Swiss army knife and a pair of shoelaces.

Unsurprisingly, neither category is a good fit for how we spend our vacations. Yet I suspect there’s more people like us out there: Rich enough to afford vacations, not rich or boring enough for hotels, and more interested in a simple, relaxing experience than in material comforts. I see some of those families out here on this campsite right now.

Camping, especially with kids, is a bit of a craft really. Your equipment slowly grows over the course of years, and you build skills. I want to share what we’re doing, and what we’re using, in the hope of helping others (especially families) to have more, and more relaxing, times together.

Accomodation

Having four kids, in an environment where everything is designed for families with two or three children at most, means we often need to go a bit bigger than others. As the core of our camping setup, we’re using a Trigano Odyssee folding caravan. It’s a smallish trailer that we hitch to our car, and that folds open into a comfortable tent for four people — if need be, it can sleep up to eight, though I wouldn’t advise trying that. Ours is from the late 90s, and cost us 1200€ when we bought it in 2012, from the sort of people who call the police on parking offenders, so it was in great shape. It’s starting to show its age though.

These days, it’s where us parents and the two younger kids sleep. The two older kids get a separate 3 person tent to themselves. In addition, we have a shelter (3.5 x 3.5m) for rain protection, and a large tarp (4x5m or something) for shade.

All this gives us plenty of room for sleeping and luggage. It’s perfect as long as the weather is good. On rainy days, we can retreat to the tents and the shelter; the tarp can’t take very much wind, and sometimes needs to be hauled in.

The trailer also is where we store our camping tables and chairs. When we set up, they go under the tarp or in the shelter, depending on the weather.

Cooking & eating

We used to have a foldable kitchen cabinet that we would set up inside the shelter, with a two-flame gas stove. But last summer, I finally got round to building a shelf for the trunk of our van (a Renault Trafic). It’s designed for Euro containers, and has space for the stove, too. This makes organizing the kitchen a lot easier.

So we cook in the back of the car, using a gas bottle stood next to it. Supplies and kitchen gear are stored in the Euro containers. Meals tend to be simple. Cooking and cleaning duties are distributed among the fanily members in pairs, on a rotating basis. These days, all of the kids are old enough to handle all of the tasks: Cooking, washing dishes, shopping.

A couple of years ago we invested in a proper cooler, and it’s doing a great job.

Entertainment

There’s a beach just 50m away. In the trailer, we have various geological strata of toys and gameas for different age ranges. We play board and card games together.

We always carry a large inflatable canoe, a Gumotex Scout. Often, we take an inflatable standup paddle board along as well. Since we’re a kayaking family, there might be some additional boats, but that’s just us.

Oh, and we have at least three hammocks strung up, if at all possible. The family consensus is that we’re here to chill. Whenever someone gets itchy feet — usually it’s me — they can just devise some activity, and head out on their own. For example, I love hiking, or going on overnight kayaking trips. The rest of the family, not so much.

Advantages and limitations

This setup is good for stationary vacations in sunny climes. Pick a nice spot, drive there, set up, and stay for 2-3 weeks. It certainly wouldn’t work well for families who would like to move somewhere else every few days. We’ve actually spent our vacations in the same campsite for the past decade.

OK, it does lack novelty. But when we arrive, the kids jump out of the car and start scouting to see whether our favorite spots are available. They check whether their favorite greengrocer is working, and which of our acquaintances are there. There’s hardly any stress. Everyone knows what to expect, and it works for us.

Of course, we depend on drinking water and power being available. Toilets and showers are nice, too. But that’s true for pretty much any place where you plan to spend significant time, especially with kids. We’re set up for campsites, not for the wilderness.

Our way of camping is far from basic, but lacks various things that I see our neighbors use: air conditioning (heat waves are a problem), TV, and so forth. We don’t miss any of it.

Conclusion

This setup, built over the years with growing experience, works really well for us. We constantly find details to improve; but the key components are pretty much fixed.

No doubt things will change when the kids grow older, and our vacation team dwindles in number. That’s fine, we’ll adapt. But for now, we’re happy with what we have. It’s enough.