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I Am A Polar Bear

Travel, adventure & wellness with plenty of snow

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Category: Camping

Winter camping tips (for Sparkle & Ice) | iamapolarbear.com

Winter camping tips (for Sparkle & Ice)

November 16, 2023

With Sparkle & Ice 2023 only about ten days away now, it’s either a bit tight for time with advice or it’s perfect timing because you’re just reaching last-minute panic. I know at least one local leader has read my previous Sparkle posts and maybe I can become the authority on how to survive Girlguiding’s … More Winter camping tips (for Sparkle & Ice)

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The camping kit I use in Iceland | iamapolarbear.com

The camping kit I use in Iceland

November 9, 2023

Is November the optimum time to be publishing a post on camping kit? Nope! But I had other things I wanted to talk about first and this will be in place and waiting for you to take an interest again next summer. I wanted to show you and talk a little bit about the kit … More The camping kit I use in Iceland

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Iceland campsites review (summer 2023 edition) | iamapolarbear.com

Iceland campsites review (summer 2023 edition)

October 2, 2023

I think this is a thing I’m going to try to make a regular feature – depending on how much time I spend camping in Iceland in future. Anyway, last year I talked about the campsites I stayed on and I want to do it again. Did I go round and take photos specially for … More Iceland campsites review (summer 2023 edition)

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What I did at Camp Wildfire | iamapolarbear.com

What I did at Camp Wildfire

September 21, 2023

I’ve had my eye on Camp Wildfire for a while and last year, I got an unexpected last-minute opportunity to go as crew. I enjoyed it so much that eventually I talked myself into going as a paying customer this year. If you’ve not come across it, Camp Wildfire is a festival inspired by Scout … More What I did at Camp Wildfire

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Organising a Ranger camp | iamapolarbear.com

Organising a Ranger camp

August 7, 2023

This post has already been through several drafts, with titles like “I got my Going Away With licence!” and “I nearly got my Going Away With licence!” but the reality is… I nowhere near got my Going Away With licence. I did organise a Ranger camp single-handedly though, and I’m going to tell you all about … More Organising a Ranger camp

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Can camping heal the soul? | iamapolarbear.com

Can camping heal the soul?

June 29, 2023

It’s Sunday night and I’m fresh from the bath, with face, hair and feel all scrubbed and made soft after feeling like a disgusting camp goblin for the last few days and I’m so much more chilled and calm than the creature who loaded up a small car and set off on Friday. I have … More Can camping heal the soul?

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What were the campsites in Iceland like? | iamapolarbear.com

What were the campsites in Iceland like?

September 26, 2022

I stayed on four campsites in Iceland this summer and I thought I’d do you a little review of each of them. I spent two nights at Hveragerði because I wanted to see the volcano but also have options beyond Reykjanes when the weather was bad, moved up to Laugarvatn, stayed in the hobbit house … More What were the campsites in Iceland like?

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I went to Camp Wildfire! | iamapolarbear.com

I went to Camp Wildfire!

September 12, 2022

I know, any travel or lifestyle blogger worth their salt has at least a little archive of festival content but this was my first time. Technically it’s not my first ever festival – I went to the Larmer Tree Festival for the evening in 2015 and for the whole day in 2019 but I’ve never … More I went to Camp Wildfire!

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I may never go camping again | iamapolarbear.com

I may not ever go camping again

August 18, 2022

*sighs* Look. I like camping. But the last two trips have been so offputting that right now, I feel like binning my tents and never setting foot on a campsite again. I freely admit that I use Twitter as a steam valve but I do try to keep this blog reasonably positive. If I don’t … More I may not ever go camping again

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The Big Wild Sleepout | iamapolarbear.com

Camping at RSPB Arne: the Big Wild Sleepout

July 25, 2022

RSPB Arne is a nature reserve, a peninsula covered mostly in rare lowland heath sticking out into the west side of Poole Harbour. You may remember it from my Christmas Adventure with Tom & Catherine this year. It welcomes day visitors but you don’t normally get to camp there so when the opportunity came up … More Camping at RSPB Arne: the Big Wild Sleepout

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Who am I?
I'm Julie, a travel, adventure and wellness blogger. I love Iceland, I love jumping into hot water and I do love a bit of snow.

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The first blog of the Denmark trip is up! It’s my birthday trip to @aireancientbathsdk which isn’t necessarily a great subject for a blog and Instagram because in the pursuit of serenity and relaxation (which it achieves!) you can’t take cameras in. And I made it to the end! A reel every day! Today’s features a weird otherworldly metro station and a very nice beach (this is where you come kayaking in Copenhagen!) and then a lovely flight home (with two episodes of Farscape). Last proper day in Denmark and I finally made it to Christiania which has got the odd vibe of being free and artsy (and yeah, a bit illegally leafy) but also like there are Rules. Then I detoured slowly through Copenhagen (got lost on the way to the metro) and finished up the day with an extended session at AIRE Ancient Baths, a spa with Latin names for all its pools hiding away in the raw brickwork of the old Carlsberg factory. Oh, I needed some time in hot water! Turns out I’ve been missing that all week! Who’d have thought a graveyard would be a nice place to spend some time on an intolerably hot day in Copenhagen? The Hans Christian Andersen Experience was perhaps not something I’ll rush back to but the National Museum is quite something. Three and a half years ago, I was sitting in a bar in Denmark with an Irishman, a Norwegian and three Icelandic lawyers while they gave us a potted history of the Vikings and the relationship between Iceland and Denmark that included the phrases “Viking is a verb, not a noun” and “Denmark is our colonist”. Chunks of that conversation made it into my second book, Lava Land (look out for it in the autumn!). Today I kayaked around Copenhagen with #GreenKayak collecting litter from the canals. Oh, that one’s getting a blog post! And then I walked around Copenhagen a bit in the afternoon and the evening and filmed very little of it. This is the reason I’m in Denmark this week - not out of a desire to see Copenhagen but a desire to see a 5cm layer of fossils, sticky clay and iridium, the geological evidence of an asteroid that hit Mexico 66m years ago and caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Today I went to Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens - and I went on two rollercoasters (and was only terrified of one). My main “home” on the internet is my blog, I Am A Polar Bear (link in bio) and I always say that I make the effort to keep up with Instagram partly to promote it and partly to get my face out there as a travel blogger - which I guess is one and the same thing. So why has it taken this long to occur to me that grid posts should match up with blog posts? So that’s what I’m doing from now on.

About Julie

I'm a blogger, adventurer, lover of hot water, amateur paddler and polar bear who wilts in hot weather. Time (by day, I'm a researcher) and funds keep me within Europe and I make regular trips up to the north, especially to Iceland. I like the occasional adventure across Europe by train and I'm starting to make use of my weekends for 48-hour adventures. This isn't my only creative outlet - I've written two travelogues (one on a winter adventure across the Arctic Circle and one on exploring volcanoes during a warm summer road trip around Iceland) plus a little book of Icelandic pools and I have a fourth book in progress right now.

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