I love a packing post, I really do. Almost as much as I hate actually packing. I planned to do a bit of a photoshoot on my glamping trip to show what I packed but it rained most of the weekend and frankly, I didn’t have the time to put on all the things I packed. It took at least six journeys back to the car to bring it all into the tabernacle. So, instead of telling you and showing you everything I packed, I’m going to show you everything I actually used.
Yeah, it turns out – as everyone knows in their brain but no one believes in their heart – you need very little for two and a half days away in the woods. I packed two suitcases, a big zipped tote bag thing and at least three shopping bags of stuff, to say nothing of all the loose stuff I had to take the empty tote bags back for but I used next to nothing. A set of clothes plus one spare in case I get wet in the rain, enough entertainment for two days and that’s really all you need, even for glamping in the winter.
Hot tub
The most important bit of glamping is the hot tub and I did use all the things I took for that – two swimsuits, a pair of Crocs, a GoPro and a box of “submersible candles”. They’re like little electric tealights but smaller and they have a rubber seal inside so you can literally drop them in the water. They’re perfect for lighting up a hot tub of an evening and you don’t need to worry about knocking them in. And I have a new headtorch, a Petzl Actik which is really bright. I also used the drybag but only to take my wet clothes home. Sometimes I put a towel or something in it so I’ve got it to hand but it doesn’t get rained or sloshed on but it really wasn’t worth it for the scurry back to the hut.
Clothes
I took so many clothes. In the end, I wore only two outfits. I wore my jeans, my Dua Lipa t-shirt, my long-sleeved fake denim top, my green dungarees and my red checked fleece. I briefly wore a colour-block pastel woolly jumper on Saturday morning but it’s neither as practical nor as comfortable as the fleece so I changed before I went out. I did wear my green denim jacket on Friday but I’m not sure it counts because I took it off when I arrived and never put it back on again.
Because this is a blog and you’re supposed to tell everyone where everything came from: the jeans are from Tesco a little over a year ago. The Dua Lipa t-shirt is from the Future Nostalgia tour. The dungarees are Black Girls With Gardens from Lucy & Yak (I’m not black but I am a girl and I do garden). The red checked fleece is from Primark many years ago. I wore the Crocs (they’re Bayas, not Classics: I don’t know exactly what the difference is but it worked out a saving of about £15!) out to the garden to check on the hot tub fire but otherwise I lived in a pair of black trainers from Primark.
I took my fluffy green pyjamas but actually, I had an electric heater and I wasn’t cold enough to need them. I slept in the Dua Lipa t-shirt – because when you’re living in a shed in the woods, you can sleep in the same t-shirt that you wear during the day.
I also took my waterproofs. I wore my blue waterproof jacket on Friday night to check on the hot tub and I wore it for my quick urban walk on Sunday afternoon.
What I didn’t wear
Umm.. red cord trousers, orange/mustard/coral trousers. The checked shirt. The long brown knitted hoodie. The brown leather hiking boots. My sheepskin poncho, which is my daily walk outer layer, didn’t even come out of the car. I used my waterproof jacket but not the trousers. Didn’t wear the wellies, either. Didn’t wear the fluffy socks and only one of the four pairs of thick decorative socks. Those are mostly for photos and I haven’t found a way of getting them in photos except photos that are more suited to… well, a slightly different platform to Instagram (one which I’m not on, for the record!). I also took a towelling robe to put on after the hot tub. Guess what? Never used.
Non-wearable
The only other things I really used were my phone and tablet, I read a few pages of a book and a few Kindle books (“a few books” sounds better than the reality: I read two Trebizon books, which I first read when I was about nine and which pose no challenge whatsoever to an adult with a single spare hour) and I edited a chapter or two of my own book. I hung up some string lights but I only switched them on once or twice. I guess I brushed my teeth and I washed my hair on Sunday night before it got all sweaty packing up to leave on Monday but honestly, that’s all I used. Oh, and my tripod for a few photos and one section of video. I charged my phone and tablet.
Non-wearable things I didn’t use
I took an enamel mug for hot chocolate but it turns out the tabernacle had some, so that didn’t get used. Didn’t use my fire poker – which I took because I made it and I wanted to use it for the two fires I knew I was going to make, indoor and hot tub. I didn’t use my good knife. Going to have to check where that ended up, actually. I took the camp neckerchiefs for my Rangers, with the good intention of sewing the tags on for them for Sparkle & Ice but I didn’t do that. I took my camp blankets and I did do the traditional glamping photoshoot with the grey one but as blankets… nah, didn’t use them. Far too hot in a tiny home with a warm bed and fluffy pyjamas to want extra blankets. What else was in my bag of tricks? An entire roll of jewellery – apparently I really thought that I might wear four pairs of earrings, three necklaces, three rings and four bracelets over two and a half days. I wore the bracelets that were on my wrist when I left home, the necklace that was already around my neck and the stainless steel bombproof hoop earrings that I didn’t take out for another week afterwards. The rest stayed in the roll. I didn’t use the mini tripod, I didn’t use the microphone (well, I did, but it didn’t make it into the video so I might as well have not bothered), I didn’t use the GoPro charger, I didn’t charge my Kindle, I didn’t use my earphones. I did have the sense to completely forget to take my film camera because I know I wouldn’t have used that either.
And that’s it. Will I learn from this when I go glamping next winter? Nope! Next winter will be my own private Sparkle & Ice again and so I’ll want to take all my Guide clothes and my winter flower crown on top of all the other things. The problem is that when I’m glamping I immediately get the urge to appear all cottagecore and take photos of myself wafting around in the woods and I just don’t have a cottagecore wardrobe. I’m not folklore, I’m reputation, to put it in Swiftian terms. I’m far more at home in hoodies and boots than in floaty dresses and cardigans. But I raid the house for anything even cottagecore-adjacent and then because it’s just not me, I don’t wear any of it. What I really need is to talk myself out of thinking I’ll ever do those photos when I’m glamping. Just going away for a lazy weekend. Just need enough practical clothes to not freeze and to lie around not doing very much.