LuminAID PackLite 12 - A Pleasantly Bright Surprise.

A recent trip away camping gave us the opportunity for review to test out a little lantern that my wife had for review purposes. Normally I would not give my views on a product that she was testing, however as this was relevant to my usual subject matter and also something of a revelation, I decided this should be an exception to the rule.

Basically what we have here is a small inflatable, solar powered lantern, which struck me as a recipe for disaster, however I was in for a shock. Possibly my lack of enthusiasm could be put down to experiences of solar powered lights of a few years ago, apparently though things have advanced rapidly.

The lantern itself is about 10cms square on the top and around 12cms high when inflated, pull out the plug and it packs flat for transport. As the picture shows it comes with a hanging strap and a small solar panel on the top.  It weighs about 100g which combined with its small size would make it ideal for backpacking, although on this occasion it was being used in the family tent.

The real question is though, how well does it work. Embarrassingly, considering my preconceptions, it is brilliant.

The lantern was charged during the day and supplied a bright light throughout the evening, due to being inflatable it is also quite robust, ideal for carrying around at a festival or out in the wilds. It is easy to inflate, although tricky to get the stopper in without losing some air, not a problem that impacts on its use at all though. We did find that the switch could be a bit hit and miss on occasions, but generally speaking it was fine.

Would I recommend it, absolutely, in fact this little lantern has made me a real convert, it can obviously be used for camping, great for fishing and I suspect you could float it in the bath if the electric was out, not that I tested that however. It seems very robust, light and is ideal for keeping in a rucksack or jacket once charged, smashing little bit of kit quite frankly.

Andy

Camp Bestival - Fantastic As Always

A great event as it always seems to be, for us Camp Bestival never seems to disappoint, although I must say that it seemed even busier than normal this year. Anyway, rather than ramble on I thought I would use the old adage that a picture tells a thousand words, so here goes.

Giant letters were a hit with the children.

Volvo rocked up with some cars, a wooden horse and coffee, which was nice.

The Pimms was flowing, which certainly pleased Zoe.

The family bear seemed quite interested as well.

A very important sign.

The fabulous Farmers Market.

The main stage, before it opened obviously.

Barefoot Walking.

A very slim Panda.

Dark and busy at night.

Even darker, although the music was good.

And rather cold.

The famous DJ Barbecue in full swing.

Better prepared for the cold on Saturday night.

The best coffee.

A giant screen, which is useful if you cannot see the stage because of the bloody great merchandising stall as normal.

Wouldn't be complete without the castle.

So overall a great weekend, was it as good as last year, not really. Certainly the bands were high profile, but it just seemed very busy and some of the smaller stalls seem to have disappeared over the past few years.

Andy

Camp Bestival - Where To Camp

The map has now been released on the official site, which gives you a good idea of where everything will be set up this year and a chance to plan some of your time at the festival. In all honesty most of the attractions are fairly close together, once you have walked in from your tent.

Where to actually camp though always presents a bit of a dilemma. I am only talking about bringing your own tent here, although there are other options with yurts, teepee's and other solutions offered on site.

This gives you two options, either the main camp site or Camping Plus, which costs an additional amount, but is much closer to the festival attractions. Dealing with the main camp site first, it is obviously large and not entirely flat. In fact the first thing you will see from the car park is a hill in front of you. This is in fact relatively level on top and a popular place to set up camp, if you walk further across this it leads to a steep down hill slope, at the bottom of which you pass into the remainder of the camping area, for the sake of argument I will call this the 2nd area.

There are a number of factors that influence where to camp, if you are arriving late on Thursday it will be a matter of fitting in where ever you can find a gap as most areas will be pretty well populated by then. The primary choice to be made is how far you want to carry all of the camping gear against how far you want to walk into the festival each day. If you are happy to do the long walk with all of the gear, then the second area is my advice. Turning left into after coming down the steep hill leads you to a flat area which is close to the toilets and showers, top tip with the showers is to use them in the afternoon when there are small or no queues. There are also normally food and drink stalls here which is very handy after a long day. Camping in this area also leaves you with a much easier daily walk, making it easier to pop back for an afternoon siesta if required.

Camping in the first area, closer to the car park, means that you have a shorter distance to carry all your equipment, it does mean a longer walk in each day though. Also to get a good pitch, flat if possible, then you need to have arrived early, the car park opens before the gates and there was a queue of campers last year waiting to get in.

Alternatively as I mentioned you can pay for Camping Plus which gives you a guaranteed pitch and is much closer to the festival being located in the area behind the Freesports Park. Unfortunately I think this is all booked for next week, but worth remembering for next year, because you will be back.

Andy

Tents - Vango Avington 500

Camping is as we all know a very cost effective way of managing family holidays, fair enough you are at the mercy of the weather to some extent, but generally speaking it is a great method of getting away on a budget. As a child almost all of our holidays were taken in a large frame tent, around Europe and the UK and I still have fond memories of these, even though we were jammed into a VW Beetle for most of them.

We certainly have not spent as much time under canvas with our children, partially due to the availability of package holidays and mobile home sites in France, but we are planning more trips. Actually we now own two tents, the primary reason for this being that our two oldest children have informed us that they are no longer coming on all of our family holidays, they are old enough to remain at home now being sixth formers, which has given us a good excuse to upgrade our tent to a better and smaller model.

Obviously there are a vast amount of tents available from a variety of manufacturers, so some research was in order. We had a list of basic requirements which were that it needed to sleep up to five, have a decent amount of living space, be a tunnel tent and to come from one of the main manufacturers. For this reason we settled on a Vango model, for many years I owned a Force 10 backpacking tent from them which served me well during hiking trips in the National Parks and abroad. I did weight up the choice of inflatable versus standard pole models, but in the end went for a normal model with flexible poles, partly because of the price difference I must admit.

The model settled on was a Vango Avington 500 which is a reasonably priced tunnel tent with a built in ground sheet and a small porch area. So what do you get for your money and how easy is it to put up are the main questions.

Firstly it comes rolled in a bag that will actually fit into the car boot, it weighs in at just under 20kgs, but is manageable to move around as the bag is small enough to get your arms around on carry on your shoulder, it does have carry straps but I certainly would not like to carry it any distance with them.

The tent is tightly rolled, I will never get it to look like that again, with the inner bedroom, curtain, poles and pegs inside it. There are also pitching instructions sewn into the bag or they can be accessed on the Vango website.

Pitching the tent is pretty straight forward, but needs to be dealt with in an methodical manner as with most tents. Once the poles are fitted together they simply slide through the corresponding seams on the flysheet and one end is located into the metal pin system which is attached to the ground sheet. As the tent is erected the same system is used on the other side which should give an equal amount of bend to the poles. Depending on how many people you have available to hold poles you may find it useful to temporarily peg some guy ropes as you go along to keep the structure up. Once it is standing it is just a matter of pegging down everything, clipping the lower parts of the flysheet to the poles with the clips attached and tightening the tension straps for the poles. The bedroom is easy to put in place with a toggle and clip system, a dividing curtain is also supplied. Vango quote a 20 minute pitch time, which might take a bit of practice, but is probably possible. The only problem we cam across was that one of the poles had caught on the seam meaning that it would not bend enough to fit into its metal pin. After some head scratching we realised what had happened, released the caught piece and everything fitted fine, worth watching out for though as it seems like quite an easy thing to do.

The interior is quite an impressive size as you can see and even with the bedroom in place there is still plenty of living space. The straps visible are tension bands which can be tightened in windy conditions to stabilise the tent. They are not required in calm weather and can simply be unclipped and stored it the tent pocket.

Overall then it seems to meet our requirements well, there are side and front entry points, large windows and ventilation flaps, which will all hopefully be beneficial when it is put to the test at the end of the month with its first outing being to Camp Bestival.

Andy

Holidays-Camp Bestival

Choosing holidays of any length can be a complex exercise when you have children, particular when there are a spread of ages or the family size is greater than four people. Additionally the financial aspect has to be taken into account and let’s face it while there are some fantastic options available many of them would hardly be described as cheap, particularly during the normal school holiday period.

To be honest though the selection can be somewhat bewildering, hotel, villa, camping, specialist such as Mark Warner Holidays or Club Med, UK or abroad, there is something available for everyone, at a price. This year we are planning to fit a couple of breaks in the first of which is Camp Bestival.

We have actually been to Camp Bestival before on two occasions and from a dad point of view it has been pretty good, although to be fair the weather was in our favour on these visits, quite how pleasant an experience it would be if it poured with rain all weekend is not something that I care to dwell upon, fingers crossed for the sun again this year.  As far as accommodation goes it is camping, although you can pay more for posh camping in a Yurt, Airstream or such like if you wish, although as the vast majority of your time is spent around the festival it seems like a bit of a luxury to do so.

Obviously as this is a family friendly festival there is plenty to keep the children busy with outdoor activities, which includes plenty of nature based activities in the fabulous Dingley Dell area set in the trees, which is nice, cool and calm. There are also art, science, sports and many other activities to keep a good spread of age groups amused.

The kids therefore are going to have a great time which is the main thing, but what about dad. Well if you are feeling energetic how about a nature run, there is also a Freesports Park but I warn you now it is normally full of seriously fit teenagers. If food is your thing then there are plenty of stalls scattered around the grounds the centre piece of which is the Feast Collective, catering for most tastes including seafood, Caribbean, Asian street food, DJ BBQ and much more, all of which was very good last year. Prefer to cook for yourself, then there are also supplies on site including a Farmers Market.

Music, well it is a festival after all, there is a large line up including Ella Henderson, Kaiser Chiefs and Clean Bandit, whom my daughters assure me are awesome, and many others. Alternatively if you come from my generation Level 42 and Bob Geldof, who I have assured my daughters was good before awesome became an expression.

Highlight from last year, well there was a shower one evening which 'forced' us into the Lego area, unlimited bricks to build with, fabulous, just hope they are back this year.