The Happy Campers

As I mentioned before my favourite Christmas pressie was a book called The Happy Campers by Tess Carr and Kat Heyes. I always ask for books at Christmas. Last year I got the Allotment Book and a book of Ansel Adams photos, the year before a book on Waterside Living (for dreaming!), the year before that the Vegetarian Cookbook. I am such an easy person to buy gifts for!

Anyway The Happy Campers is a great book, just the thing to see me through the bleak winter months with dreams and plans of a summer spent outdoors. The book is written in a very chatty, informal style and covers lots of fun topics as well as the essentials. It is also a very beautiful book with great photos. The photos are of the casual, non-staged variety and a lot are overexposed or polaroid style. This gives it a lovely 1970s vintage vibe. ( There is even a little tip in the book on how to achieve the '70s/polaroid style with ordinary film such as putting it in your washing machine!) I think this is very clever as the ages of the people its aimed at would probably have very fond memories of camping in the 70s (and earlier or later) and it gives it a lovely nostalgic feel as well.

On the down side it is a bit "trendy"as it has lots of photos of young beautiful people being effortlessly cool but overall I recommend it as a fun, family friendly guide to camping.

The chapters cover the basics such as what to take, how to make a campfire and setting up camp. Then there are the more fun things such as cooking (chapatis on spades anyone?), making your camp pretty with wildflowers and candles and games to play. There are tips on making extra comfy beds with handmade crochet blankets and sheepskins, beach games, weather watching, a map to the stars, wildlife guides, how to take photos, knitting, kite making and lots of fantastic recipes.All in all I can thoroughly recommend this book if you like camping and you want something fun to look at. It will inspire you to make all sorts of plans for the summer months and to make the most of camping when you go. As for me considering I will have a newborn this summer I don't think we will be camping anywhere other than the back garden perhaps. I am planning instead to do lots of picnic outings and to make these as close to camping trips as possible with blankets and candles and lots of star gazing.

(Apologies for the terrible scans - an old computer and no software for photos/scans so it won't let me crop or fix photos. I tried photos on my camera of the pages but they were worse!)