I have camped at Glastonbury for two consecutive years with my three children and will do so again this year. I have some insights to share with other Dads who might consider attempting the festival with their children:

1) Camp high
As a performer, I camped backstage at the Park, on a high pitch overlooking the festival, close to the fence. The effort involved in hauling the gear uphill was offset by the relative peace and quiet of the spot throughout the festival. If I was going there as a common-or-garden Dad punter, I would aim far away and high.

2) Take a wheelbarrow or trolley
Hauling your gear from car to site is a difficult and unpleasant experience if you’ve got a big family tent and all the extra beds and sleeping bags that come with children. Glastonbury has metal reinforced pathways that are wide and hard enough to take a large trolley or barrow. The walk from car to campsite for me was about half an hour. I had to make two trips. I would struggle to carry my tent more than ten minutes on my back. Keep a tight rein on the amount of gear you are taking. Take some rope to secure your gear to the barrow and some string to tie all the sleeping bags and mats together.

3) Cooking
I never used to cook at festivals but these days finances mean we have to bring all our food with us. So what to take? We live off a big home-cooked chicken pie and sausage rolls, large jars of homemade pesto with bags of pasta, and a bag of croissants. You can’t wash up easily at Glastonbury, and you don’t want to lug a coolbox there, so I avoid meat and food that requires anything more complex than heating a pan of water. Don’t stop off at Tescos on your way there, as then you will have to carry thin shopping bags across the festival.

4) Kids’ field
Bugaboo hell. None of the parents we travelled with enjoyed the kids’ field. First of all, who wants to sit around watching their children do stuff? Secondly, children aren’t going to learn to juggle in the hour or two you spend there. I’d rather see family experiences more integrated with the festival such as…

5) House of Fairy Tales
Established by artists Deborah Curtis and Gavin Turk, the House of Fairy Tales is “a child-centred artist led project which draws on an extensive team of artists, performers, writers, educationalists, designers, musicians, film makers, dreamers and philosophers to create magical, parallel worlds where learning is play and play is directed learning.” The people at the House of Fairy Tales are one highlight of Glastonbury and my three children get thoroughly involved. Last year Doctor Who himself, Matt Smith, dropped by and was photographed with all the kids.The House of Fairy Tales is located in the Park area.

6) The Park
Established by Emily Eavis in 2007, the Park is ideal for Dads. The bar is not so packed, the stage is full of interesting and alternative acts (all the bands I want to see – in Glastonbury 2011, that’s James Blake, Tame Impala, John Grant), and you are well out of the maddening throng. Also the Free University of Glastonbury is in the Park area – I am talking about the history and meaning of camping there on Sunday at 1pm.

7) But what about the headliners?
I didn’t see any of the big acts. I’ve been in those crowds without kids. I couldn’t face them with small children. One of the consequences of taking kids with you is that you are excused Must Seeing the Must See events. I wouldn’t cross the road to watch Bono sing, never mind jostle for position amongst thousands of other people. Free yourself of festival fret – that feeling that something better is happening somewhere else and you must trudge off to see it.

You sound like a really dull man
I am speaking only from the Dad perspective here, from that portion within me concerned with the logistics of shifting a family around. But it’s a fair comment.

9) When should Dads arrive at Glastonbury, and when should they leave?
Judging arrival and departure is the real trick. Over the last few years, because of the recession and the poor rate of exchange with the euro, many people take Glastonbury as their holiday. This skews the usual traffic patterns, with lots of people arriving on a Wednesday. I aim to arrive around 11am on Thursday morning. and have never any problems and barely any delay. We leave on Sunday about 4-5pm and likewise there is no queue. To put that in perspective, my mate spent six hours in the car park on Monday. Six hours! Fortunately he did not have his children with him

10) Buggy?
We went for two backpacks in which to haul the children around, each packed up with wet and hot weather gear. Just don’t take a buggy that runs on casters, as I saw a lot of Dads digging the mud and grass out from the wheels. My reasoning is that a buggy will struggle in the really deep Glasto mud. The last two years have been dry. But it won’t always be so.

Two baby backpacks with rain cover and rain suit

1. Sleeping
Where will they sleep? Tiny babies who can’t roll over go in Samsonite pop-up cots and then their larger bubble cot, which accommodates them until they are 18 months old. Vaude and Little Life also make good travel cots to use from birth to about two years old.

Keeping children warm at night is crucial. Each of my babies slept in a double-layered sleeping bag with zip-on sleeves. Doubling or tripling the number of children in one room also keeps them warm – like gerbils. I take small sheepskin rugs to go under the cot for extra insulation. For older children, thermarest trail mats suffice. They do not require as much puff as a standard blow-up bed.
Tents are hot places in the day, making afternoon naps a problem; I often wheeled the baby around in the buggy, letting them nod off as and when. A sun shade for the buggy is essential.
The worst part of camping with babies is traipsing around a tent in the middle of the night in your long johns looking for clean nappies, wipes or bottles. Try to keep the tent tidy and these essential items close to hand. Glow sticks make good night lights for toddlers and will give you enough light to change them by without startling them. Head torches are not just for pot-holers: a small head torch means you can keep both hands free if you need to change or rock an infant back to sleep again.

2. Eating
Breast milk is by far the most convenient food for a baby on holiday. There are no storage or hygiene issues to take care of.
Cleaning bottles and keeping enough milk is particularly troublesome at festivals; when I went to Glastonbury, I planned ahead and breastfed my youngest daughter, only knocking it on the head (breastfeeding not the baby) when I returned.

One top tip is to freeze the milk before you leave and then put it in a coolbag. The frozen bottles act as ice packs, keeping your other provisions cool.
At other times, I have nagged stall-holders for hot water to wash baby bottles with, and Math has even bought a glass of milk from them when required. For older, weaned babies make sure you arrive at camp with a couple of meals already prepped. Give them something to munch on while you pitch camp. They have no patience when it comes to their bellies, and will not wait while you struggle with the tent, so it’s up to you to have foresight.

3. Weather
It will rain and your baby will want to crawl out of the tent to play in the puddles; waterproof suits (Muddy Puddles and Bush Baby make these) and waterproof booties (Bush Baby, Togz and Barts all make these) are good protection. If it is sunny the usual sun-cream, hats, full body coverage applies. Wellies for everyone.

4. Playing
Babies love the outdoors: they love the sounds of birdies singing, moo cows mooing and the wind blowing through the trees. They are quite interested in sticks they find on the ground and they like pulling grass up in their chubby little hands. Let them; dirt and the fresh air is why you took them camping.

5. Pitching
It’s hard to pitch a tent and look after the baby at the same time, especially if your tent requires two pairs of hands to erect. Arriving late at night is always pretty tough. Try your utmost to get there in daylight hours. Do a dry run and practise pitching any new tents before you travel, even if it means pitching it in the local park.

More >>> 6-10 Tips for Camping with Kids

The weighing-out of the “dry” ingredients is best done at home and then, once at camp, you can add the “wet” ingredients. Remember to pack a whisk, a large bowl and something to measure the milk.

Dry ingredients

250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp caster sugar

Wet ingredients, to be added before you cook

2 eggs
300ml milk (this generally equates to a large mug-full)
Butter for frying

Method

Put all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and whisk in the eggs. Gradually add the milk, whisking all the time until you have a smooth batter. Batters should always be left to rest awhile, so you have time to set the campfire and heat up the muurikka (or whatever pan you are using). The pancakes should be cooked rather quickly so a small hot fire is ideal.

Once you have a rested batter and a hot pan, melt a knob of butter and add one large spoonful of batter to the pan per pancake. Once the pancakes start to bubble, it is time to flip and cook the other side. For each batch, melt another knob of butter before cooking more pancakes. Serve hot and with any of the following fillings:

Maple syrup and streaky bacon
Fried eggs and bacon
Fresh fruit
Fried bananas
Caramelized apples
Caramelized oranges

Totem Pole at Abbey Farm campsite in the Cotswolds

As satisfying as well chosen gear is, objects and consumption are not the point of camping; while a newspaper is not the right place to admit to feelings of mysticism in the night woods, I will give full vent to camping mysticism at my forthcoming event at Port Eliot Festival, We Are Camping.

Cath demonstrates the camping water bag

Basic cooking ingredients
Olive oil, salt and pepper, butter and some tinned food. Amounts really depend on what you have to store it all in. Tea bags, coffee, sugar, of course.

Carbs and protein
I pack plenty of pasta, rice, couscous and even my campfire bread mix. Then some easy-to-store proteins like beans, chickpeas, halloumi cheese, tinned tuna, houmous, saucisson and anchovies.

Sauces etc.
My camp kitchen also includes tinned tomatoes and coconut milk, onions, carrots, garlic, chillies and fresh tomatoes. Prepared spices, flavourings and dressings such as salsa romesco, mustard, french dressing, garlic and ginger paste, garam masala and chermoula. I also stuff fresh herbs into one of my lock-and-lock containers.

Snacks
Something that is calorific and won’t melt in the sun.

Collapsible washing bowl
In which you can wash the dishes and the baby.

Booze
Ice is hard to come by at campsites, so you want a tipple that doesn’t require it, such as whisky or red wine. My friend swears by mead. Remember the trip to the toilet is further than the short hop across the landing, so don’t go overboard. The warming effect of alcohol quickly wears off, and leaves you colder afterwards.

Hot chocolate
The effort involved in making hot chocolate at night ensures it will be the finest experience you and chocolate will ever share. Don’t skimp on the cocoa and melt real chocolate drops in the milk for added pleasure.

Cool bag or box
Boxes take up space, but keep food safe from wildlife and leaks. Many sites let you chill ice blocks in their freezers, sometimes for free, sometimes for a price.

Frozen milk
Put milk cartons in the freezer for a few days before you go. Pop them in your cool bag and not only will they chill the rest of the bag’s contents, they will also thaw in time for you to drink.

Water carrier
A collapsible one with a tap. You want water to hand for drinking, cooking and light washing.

Water flasks
Bottled water is over. Refillable flasks are where it’s at, and you’ll need them as being outdoors all the time will make you much thirstier than usual. Make sure the kids have their own flasks.

Cath’s camping gear checklist:
Camping Gear – Tent and the basics

Camping Gear – Camping cookware

Camping Gear – Food and drink

Camping Gear – Hygiene

Camping Gear – Sleeping bags and camping lanterns

Vaude badawi tent in Lake District

Tent
Before rushing out to buy the biggest tent in the shop, bear in mind that some of the more interesting campsites are quite small and will refuse entry or charge more for an enormo-tent. At festivals, a big tent can be a massive problem, as it will be far too heavy to lug from the car park and you won’t necessarily have a large enough pitch for it. Nearly all the family tents on sale play to the delusion that you are buying a house, in which square footage is important and weight irrelevant. You are not buying a house. You are camping because you want to be outdoors, not because you want to cover the outdoors in a giant bag. A well-designed family tent should have headroom in the living area, but low ceilings in the bedrooms to trap heat.

Tarp
A sheet of tarpaulin strung from a tree means you can cook in drizzly weather, and offers breezy shade when the sun is out.

Waterproofs
All-in-one suits and wellies for toddlers, all-in-one suits for babies, and waterproof jackets for everyone else. If you don’t want to wear waterproof trousers, then change into shorts. Walking boots or wellies are essential, especially at festivals, where the mud can be biblical.

Picnic rug
If you don’t want to bother with a table and chairs, take a plastic-backed picnic rug.

Table and chairs
We used to camp without a table and chairs, using a rug instead. After five years of eating off the ground, Math’s longing for a chair was so intense I was concerned that he would resort to theft. I found flat pieces of reinforced plastic that slid unobtrusively into my rucksack and could be folded into small stools, about six inches high, but the spectacle of him squatting on them only added to Math’s indignity and sense of failure as a man. Once we switched to camping with a car, he bought himself the biggest chair in the shop.

Cooking Matches
Long matches to light fires, stoves and barbecues. A cigarette lighter is not always suitable.

Ordnance Survey map of the area
Math is a great believer in the importance of orientating ourselves upon this earth.

Clothes
Don’t forget to take a big warm jumper; whatever the season, it gets cold at night. At bedtime, stuff the jumper into a pillowcase and rest your head upon it.

Cath’s camping gear checklist:
Camping Gear – Tent and the basics

Camping Gear – Camping cookware

Camping Gear – Food and drink

Camping Gear – Hygiene

Camping Gear – Sleeping bags and camping lanterns

7. Which campsite?
I’ve done the full range: festivals, campsites with launderettes and shower rooms and ones with composting toilets and a single cold tap. If you know what to expect then you can plan ahead. Sites with shops mean you can always get snacks and fresh milk, which is convenient, but you may be sacrificing other things like having an open fire. Festivals sell lots of gloopy food and beer but are shy of grocery shops and so you will have to take supplies, at least for baba.

8. Hygiene
Babies don’t like showers, nor do toddlers. Little babies can be bathed in sinks if there are plugs; otherwise a collapsible bucket filled with warm water and a sponge is your best bet. If you take your toddler into the shower don’t expect it to be a refreshing, relaxing experience. It won’t be for you, your child or any other campers in the shower block. A couple of days without a bath won’t do them any harm.

9. Illness
Always unfortunate in a tent, one holiday resulted in Matthew losing a filling on some Spaghetti Vongole and Alice, then 18 months old getting conjunctivitis. A basic first aid kit along with Calpol, ibuprofen for kids and adults, a light burns kit and insect repellent is a must.

10. Nappies
I have always worked on needing an average of four per day per child and a few extra on top. Sites vary and some will expect you to take your rubbish home with you; come prepared with nappy sacks and bin liners.

Pitched on long grass, the zipped-in groundsheets were swampy underfoot, and the bigger the tent, the looser and sloppier they felt. I don’t like tents that pretend to be houses. They remind me of vegetarian sausages. Why pretend to be something you are not?

Thirty-three years after Bob Gillis revolutionised the industry by inventing the first geodesic backpacking tent, the Oval Intention, this camping fair seemed intent on taking a big step backward, being more in the spirit of those despised tan-and-orange monsters of Vintage Camping. The Oval Intention used tension to provide integrity to its structure, following the geodesic dome popularised by Buckminster Fuller. Here the design of large tunnel tents like the Outwell Florida 6 owed more to Wisteria Lane – superfluous weight added to make a tent that looks like a suburban terrace, pitched with a rotary clothes drier in the yard to add to the air of domesticity.

I have a strong aversion to tents with windows. A tent is not a house. You should not be sitting in your tent peering out at your neighbours through a thick sheet of plastic. I don’t want a tent with a wardrobe either. Or a carpet. Outwell’s wall-to-wall carpet comes in a box illustrated with a picture of a happy couple laughing sensuously. Because that’s how in-tent wall-to-wall carpet makes you feel. This is campsite as temporary suburb.

We wandered into the camping shop. We are in the market for a table but none of the tables on show survived five minutes with the boy toddler. We are also in the market for less stuff. That’s what camping teaches you – that you don’t need all that stuff. After an hour, I bought a five quid foot pump, ignoring the motorised ones. Let my children inflate an airbed. Let them know what that feels like.

The highlight of the fair was Outwell’s Indian Lake tent, a teepee with a porch, erected around a thick central pole. I would have liked to have a crack at pitching it, to test the promise of it being “easy to pitch and pack”. Like the little conical hat atop the Vaude Badawi II, the peak is meant to aid ventilation, although the design of the Indian Lake felt like a pretentious hotch-potch where the Vaude Badawi II is a more elegant evocation of the nomad. Of the others on show, we like the Vango Tigris 800 and 600 tunnels, cheap and very easy to pitch for a family tent, although the extension looked like a right dog’s dinner slung onto the back. How long before some enterprising firm decides to cash-in on the British habit of suburbanising everything they touch by manufacturing a conservatory that attaches to the side of your tent?

Birling Gap

Math began cooking. The grill does not have separate settings, you cannot raise or lower it in relation to the heat. Once his pyramid of coals were lit, he arranged the heat into thirds, with two hot patches either side of an empty middle section. Having a section of the grill that is not over any coals works on a lidded barbecue because the circulating heat will be sufficient for slow cooking.

“Don’t make the mistake of presuming that we know what we are doing,” he warned

Some chefs prefer arranging the coals in a gradually declined slope from left to right, but the portable barbecues lack the depth necessary for this arrangement. The trick is to create the variety of temperatures required to cook a variety of meats – in this case, boned chicken thighs, venison kebabs and sausages, all with a light coating of oil so that they would not stick to the grill.

The tide battled its way up the beach, making for an anxious moment in which we wondered if we would have to strike camp and break for the stairs. Another family arrived with their barbecue, took a doubtful look at the churning rising waters, but were reassured by the sight of us blithely cooking. Math went over to speak to them;

“Don’t make the mistake of presuming that we know what we are doing,” he warned. They set up as far the encroaching waves as was possible on the narrow strip of beach, and started cooking. Fortune favours the brave.

Here are my barbecue recipes

The absolute minimum gear while still packing a kid.

I wrote this for The Guardian on the subject.

Now I can drive. But I’ll never forget heaving all that kit around the public transport system.