I was scrolling through my news feed as you do and an article in the mainstream press came up about wild camping on Dartmoor with the tagline “in search of affordable and sustainable adventure”. Now, I nearly spat my coffee out when I saw the kit list. Over 4 grands worth of kit!! I kid you not.
Serious question though. If you don’t have 4k rattling around behind the sofa cushions and wanted to get into wild camping, can you kit yourself out to not suffer with a more modest budget? Say £200. (Caveat, this is on top of basic hiking kit, waterproofs etc. )
So this is how I would spend that money if it was mine, and based on kit i have actually owned or experienced.
I have a few criteria to meet here, whilst you can get away with kipping under a builders tarp and eating cereal bars I’m going for a bit of basic comfort and 3 season weather protection here. My other criteria are:
- No random online super cheap brands, “happy fun time adventure” type stuff. These have really flooded the market with really variable quality kit, some is actually ok and even quite good, a lot is junk. But when you are working on a budget there is not always the option to buy twice!
- It’s got be decent enough to give a few years of service even if you choose to upgrade later. And in all honesty even when you have invested in more expensive kit this should be stuff worth having in the gear cupboard.
- It’s for wild camping, and by that I mean wild, not half an hour from the car with a crate of beer and a wheelbarrow. So it has to be light enough to make for an enjoyable adventure. I am also thinking about being out on the moors and hills here versus bushcrafting where my list would differ. (e.g. hammocks, are by and large no use in the hills).
Outside of the clothes on your back there are three core things required to graduate from day hiking to overnighting. 1. Shelter, 2. A sleep system, 3. Cooking equipment. Plus a few small but essential items.
Budget Shelter – Tarp or Tent?
So the cheapest and a pretty versatile option is a tarp. I own a few, my favourite being a home made wax canvas one, but for a beginner a tent is generally a better option. Insect protection, more weather protection and more feeling of security. However, if I do a wild camp for £100 budget a tarp it will be.
So a tent would be my recommendation for a beginner. There are a lot of choices, but based on my own experiences here I am going to plump for a Vango Nevis 200. I bought mine for £89 new, and they are available for around this if you look around. Why the 200 over the 100. Primarily to get a bit more room versus a 1 man tent. A simple tunnel design offers a good compromise for weight and space with acceptable strength. Not ideal for serious high wind but venturing into the hills in a winter gale is a more serious proposition and needs more investment. There are other options around a similar price bracket, things I would lookout for are: sub 2kg weight (the nevis is 1.8), alloy poles (fibreglass are heavy, hard to thread and easy to break), a small porch as a minimum. Whilst 1 man options, like the Nevis 100, can still be a good choice, having a bit more room is usually appreciated especially when wet. The OEX Phoxx range also come recommended.
Ok £89 down, £111 left.
Sleep Systems – the best sleeping bag and mat for beginner wild campers
On this budget, a down bag, which is warmest and lightest is realistically out. Synthetic bags are well suited to damp climates, typical UK hill weather, and good options for a 2 season bag can be had quite cheap. Again thinking of weight here, I have done a lot of fair weather camping, even some slightly more exciting nights including a Alpine bivvies here in an old snugpak travelpak lite, and I survived. A lightish synthetic bag is always a useful thing to have so my choice here is the current Snugpak TravelPak 2. A quick browse shows I can pick this up for £39. So £118 and plenty of budget left. Just over a kilo for a synthetic bag with a 2deg comfort rating should do for most spring, summer, autumn UK camping. Now you need a mat. I cannot stress this enough. A cheaper bag with mat, will be warmer than a good bag with no mat. Cold ground sucks the heat out at a rapid pace.
You can blow £200 on the latest generation of inflatable camping mats but a better option on a budget is a good old foamie. Pros, light, tough, useful to double up with an inflatable for proper cold weather adventures (especially if camping on snow or ice). Cons, bulky, not as comfortable as inflatables. There are a lot of cheap inflatable, lightweight, camping mats available now on the likes of amazon but honestly I wouldn’t trust the cheapies, and basic inflatables have poor insulating value (R Value). Every cheap inflatable lightweight mat I have had has let me down after a few trips and that is a bona fide nightmare when its 2am on a windswept and rainy hillside.
A lot of options here, whilst you could opt for a super cheap 6mm mat, you might find that a bit too spartan, so something like the decathlon version is a good pick. I personally think you an lose a bit of the bulk by lopping off a couple of sections. My head end goes on a stuff sac/clothes pillow and can put my pack under my feet at a push. £17 well spent and total is now at £125. So £55 left.
Stove and cooking system
Most beginner wild camping trips are short and if they are long distance treks then weight is a priority. A lot of wild campers, on YouTube especially, opt for high efficiency “jetboil” style stoves. These are fantastic for some very specific reasons, they are very fuel efficient due to low heat loss and are a neat self contained unit. Much of their early popularity was for the the climbing community which values fuel efficiency and sometimes a hanging stove. But they are relatively heavy and pretty pricy. That weight penalty also outweighs the weight saving on gas for a short trip (I have youtube video on that) so whilst not a bad option operating on this budget I am going to plump for a lightweight gas bottle topper here.
My choice here is the Coleman Fyrelite. I have had mine for over 15 years and still gets used on short trips. It feels a bit flimsy, and bottle top canisters can be unstable but I still use mine which is testament enough for me. £15 down which leaves £40 remaining
Of course we need a gas bottle. A c100 size bottle for about a fiver is ideal for one to two night trips, I have a gas calculator to work out how much you need, here. Top tip, these little bottles are expensive relative to bigger sizes so do use a refill valve with a bigger bottle to get more life out of it. I have a video on this here. This will fit neatly into the cooking pot with the stove so a compact pack size.
For a basic pot one of these two part aluminium ones will do the job. Two parts means you can have your coffee and your porridge together and its big enough to house the gas bottle and stove neatly. £10 later and we are down to £30.
For cutlery I’m not a tremendous fan of the ubiquitious spork, although they are not iherently bad. i.e. spoon and fork elements are useful, knife useless. The cheapest servicable option are wooden disposal cutlery the type you can pick up free in most stores in the country.
So with shelter, sleeping and eating sorted what about that left over £30. Well there are a few essential additions to the kit we can fit into buddet. A headtorch is a must, try putting up a tent in the dark on a windy night with a hand held torch. Slightly deviating from my random brand aversion I really like the Blukar headtorch, cheap from amazon and a great little bit of kit. I bought one for my son for cub camp and its super bright and pretty sturdy. Another £10 down.
A few dry bags to organise kit and of course keep it dry are also super useful. A typical from lomo, looks to fit the bill. £11. I’ve had a few low price but very servicable bits of kit from lomo over the years. As above I also use a large dry bag packed with spare clothes or a jacket as a pillow.
So there we have it. With £9 to spare a wild camping setup that I would happily use for wild camping throughout the UK in typical spring to autumn conditions for less than the price of a top of the range sleep mat or bag.
If we wanted to pick up something extra for that £9 there are a few useful options. A fleece liner could extend the bag by a season and add a warm weather bedding option. A travel towel can help you add some wild swimming to your camp. Or a lightweight knife such as the opinel is always useful. The old poo spade though should be part of everyones kit. With wild camping ever more popular it’s never been more important for us all to leave no trace!
I would love to hear how you would kit out for wild camping on a small budget. Let me know in the comments below.