A First Timer's Guide to Camping Holidays

Camping holidays are growing in popularity in the United Kingdom and beyond for many reasons. One of the main benefits to such holidays is that they are significantly cheaper in cost than traditional overseas holidays that involving flying to the destination and staying at a hotel.

Another benefit to camping holidays is that they are great for experiencing life in the outdoors, and for those of you with children, it’s a good way to teach them some essential outdoors skills as well as helping them to learn more about nature and the environment from a practical perspective.

Photo via Flickr

There are basically two ways that you and your family can enjoy a camping holiday, and that is to go camping with a tent, or hit the road with a campervan. Some people prefer one over the other, so in this blog post I will discuss the pros and cons of both.

Going camping with a tent

One of the most popular ways of going camping is by travelling down to the camp site in a car and pitching up a tent that you and your family can share.

Tents are generally lightweight and portable enough to take with you in the car, and they usually come in special bags that are akin to sports bags. However, there are some downsides to tents:

• They can be cumbersome to put up, especially if they are large ones that can house several people;
• They don’t offer much protection against adverse weather conditions;
• Waking up in a tent on a hot, sunny day isn’t too dissimilar to sitting in a sauna;
• They don’t offer much in the way of security or privacy.

Using a campervan instead of a tent

Some people say that sleeping in a tent is the ‘true’ way to experience nature and the great outdoors, but if tents aren’t for you then an alternative would be to sleep in a campervan instead.