I was first introduced to the Pomoly Chalet 70 Pro through the YouTube channel TA Outdoors, where the channels host Mike demonstrated using it with a wood stove in his own woodland. For a long time I've been really interested in the idea of using a hot tent, to extend the camping season deep into the colder months, and I also like the idea of using the stove to cook whilst inside the shelter of the tent (especially when in poor weather conditions etc.). After seeing Mike's videos of the Pomoly I started to watch some others on YouTube using the tent, and I even found some up in Alaska which I think was a real testimony to the tent's ability to keep it's inhabitants warm and stand up to harsher weather conditions. So around January, I decided to buy my own and try it for myself, having borrowed a tent stove from a friend so that I could try out hot tenting!  When I bought the tent, I hoped that I would be able to take it out for some cold weather camping within the first...

This year (2025) our first camping trip, and therefore the official 'start of the season' came later than usual, and much later than I would have liked! With perfectly good reason though - the start of this year (and the end of the last) had been completely preoccupied with buying our first home. So instead of starting out with some local trips in unpredictable weather (as early spring in the UK can be so hit or miss) our first trip was at the start of May, in Eryri (or Snowdonia National Park), near Llanbedr. We'd stumbled across this site, Rhaeadr Nantcol Waterfalls, when we saw it in a video on social media, which showed the river Cwmnantcol (attempt to pronounce at your own risk) flowing straight through it, dissecting the green fields which were scattered (not rammed - thankfully) with tents and campers. As a child, my first camping trips that I can remember were in north Wales, on the shores of Bala lake, so it's an area that's fairly familiar to me. The video...

 Campsite review: Nearly Wild Camping - Woodland Edge This June I enjoyed my second trip to a Nearly Wild Camping site, near Sparkford in Somerset (for a brief introduction to Nearly Wild Camping please see my previous post here! ). Although I have had my NWC membership since last September, I have so far only managed to use it once, despite seeing lots of wonderful sites on there, it's sometimes difficult to find the time to fit it all in with various other events, trips, and general life! Anyway, myself and two friends were planning a trip, but as one of us lives down in Cornwall, we were trying to find somewhere relatively equidistant, and so, we decided to look in the West Country. For reasons that I have already stated in previous posts , England's West Country has so much to offer campers, and we found an array of sites that looked suitable for our trip, but one stood out above the rest - Woodland Edge. If the name alone wasn't enough, then the pictures of the bushcra...

 Campsite review: Byecross Farm Campsite Byecross Farm Campsite is a small, family run campsite, located on a picturesque farm near Preston - on - Wye, Hereford. There are many such campsites scattered across the width and breadth of the UK, but this one stands out... to me anyway! This campsite was the first that I ever visited without my family, when I was just 17 or 18 (I can't remember the exact date), and so it was the first trip where I actually had to pack all of my own gear and setup on my own. So then, looking back this trip could be described as a momentous occasion, although when I remove the rose tint from the memories, I can remember that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows! Our party was a group of four, ranging from 17 to 24 in age, and we made the 40 mile journey divided between three vehicles - two heavily laden 125cc motorcycles, and an equally heavily laden 1960s Volkswagen Beetle. At the time, the location of the campsite as given by Google Maps wasn't q...

Since I first embarked on my wild camping journey over two years ago, I have been fortunate enough to have camped in different environments and weather conditions (less fortunate for some of the weather conditions, I might add). These experiences have allowed me to learn from both my failures and my successes, and have aided me in selecting the most suitable gear to put in my rucksack depending on the season, weather, and style of trip planned, limited only by capacity and the number in my bank account. In this post I will list some pieces of gear which I have used for an extended period of time, and that I am particularly fond of. DD Superlight Jungle Hammock My first few wild camping trips took place in a two man compact backpacking tent (more on this below), until I received a spectacular present from my dad - a DD Superlight Jungle Hammock. As I'd taken to wild camping in the forest near home, this was absolutely ideal. The tent still comes out for any field/moorland camping tr...

The Lake District - home to some of the most rugged wilderness in the UK south of the Scottish border, and the largest national park in England. A very popular location for outdoor enthusiasts, and wild campers in particular, thanks to its epic views, beautiful scenery and enough space to remove yourself fully from civilization - even if it's just for a night or two. This is somewhere that I've wanted to visit for a wild camp for some time now, and 2023 was the year for it. Myself and my previously mentioned camping associate Jake had decided that our 2023 big 'away' trip was going to be in the Lakes, and so, we started to plan our trip, which ended up consisting of two nights away, the first in a conventional campsite, and the second, somewhere on the slopes of England's highest peak - Scafell Pike. After spending all of the Friday morning driving northwards we arrived at our campsite, The Barn Campsite, near Holmrook around 2pm. The afternoon was forecast with rai...