Last week I went back to Brownsea Island for another two nights camping in a tree tent. I learned some lessons from the first time round and I want to tell you about five things I did differently the second time.
1) I didn’t take a sleeping bag
You have to carry everything a mile from the jetty to the campsite and after hauling a 65l backpack, a day bag and my everyday essentials last time, I decided I was reducing my packing for the return journey. Could I swap my sleeping bag for a liner? It appeared I could and as this trip was happening during last week’s heatwave, I definitely could and I went for it. I left my mat behind too. I’d scoured the internet for information about whether I needed a mat in a tree tent and it appeared what I needed was insulation, not comfort. It had been comfortable without it and remember, the UK had been sweltering in a heatwave. So I didn’t need any insulation and I’d be nice and cool without the heavy bulky sleeping bag.
This was possibly the biggest mistake I’ve ever made!
For several nights before my trip, I hadn’t slept because it was too hot. Now I discovered that I wasn’t going to sleep because I was too cold. The springy bouncy tent may have been comfortable enough but yes, you need insulation! Any part of me that touched the floor was freezing and any part of me that didn’t touch the floor was freezing. I hadn’t brought clothes for cold weather. I had a t-shirt and a t-shirt dress, a pair of thin cropped trousers and a pair of the tiniest shorts I’ve ever owned, a vest and a pair of swimming shorts for sleeping in, which immediately proved insubstantial and I had a checked shirt for cool evenings. I piled the lot on and I spent the entire night wondering how long I could survive at an alleged 17 degrees before I actually got hypothermia.
The next day I went to reception, confessed my packing failure and pleaded for help. They produced a sleeping bag from their Storage Container of Wonders. It did help but it didn’t have room for my arms and still anything that touched the tent floor was freezing.
2) I brought karabiners for storage
Last time, I found that my bags, plural, slid around the tent all day and all night. Whenever I moved, they moved and they spent most of their time lying on or around the central hatch. On the way back home, I popped into Go Outdoors and bought two s-shaped karabiners. That was a good idea. Without the sleeping bag or mat, I could fit all my luggage into my 45l day bag and for simplicity, I took my string shopping bag to store the food in separately. I decided where in the tent I was going to sleep and then I hooked the bags to one of the floor loops in the opposite corner. It was a bit of a pain in that I had to scramble uphill every time I wanted something out of the bags but it kept them thoroughly under control and never once did I have to shout at them for sliding into me. (It looks so weird having a photo of my luggage on the floor and yet at the same time hanging).
3) I sewed a loop onto my washbag
For the sake of lightness, I didn’t take my washbag, I took my second-smallest washbag with just the essentials in. But the first time, I discovered there was nowhere to put the bag while I was brushing my teeth. No shelf, no space on the sink, nowhere except a hook on the back of the door. My packing cube is part of a pack of three and the largest has a loop on it. So I got some cord and sewed it onto the small cube. Another good idea! Now I could hang up the cube and have my hands free to brush my teeth.
4) I brought bug spray
Last time, I my legs got bitten half to death. I had two bites on my left leg that took about three weeks to subside and in the meantime, developed a texture unlike any other inch of skin on my body, or any human body. My own fault; I’d been warned about the bugs and to bring bug spray and I naively thought my anti-mosquito bands would be strong enough. They weren’t! So I bought a miniature can of bug spray and sprayed myself liberally.
It half worked. I lived in those aforementioned lightweight cropped trousers and I sprayed my legs and feet and didn’t get a single bite. But the monsters managed to crawl up my trousers and I have eight bites in a cluster on my right thigh, which is going to be a big red lumpy mass for a few days. I took a photo but I’ll spare you the broken red-purple veins clearly visible under my papery skin that I didn’t realise are quite as obvious in real life as they are in that photo.
5) I took oversized clothes pegs
One thing I really enjoyed last time was the sea view from my tent but it was mostly obscured by the rain cover. I rolled it up but with no way of securing it, I could only enjoy my view if I was standing outside holding up the tent wall. I made plans to invest in a couple of big 90s-style hair claws but when it came time to buy them, I came across some big clothes pegs designed to clip your towel onto your sunlounger, which seemed much more transportable and probably a lot gentler on the tent fabric. That was another good idea! I rolled up two sides of my tent and I clipped them up and they stayed up and I could lie in my tent and look out at the view and when I wasn’t using them, at night when I closed the sides in a vain attempt to keep some warmth in, I could clip them wherever was handy – on the hooks on the outside of the tent, on the loops inside, throw them in the bag. Yes, I was very pleased with my oversized pegs.
So that’s what I learned from tree camping – the hideous mistakes I had and the things that were good ideas, the things I’d do again and the things I wouldn’t.