I got back from camping yesterday, and what a week it’s been. We went back to Shell Island this year as we really enjoyed it last year. Unfortunately we didn’t get to go on the beach much last year as the weather was awful compared to this trip. There was still wind and rain but in between we got serious amounts of sun so we were able to get to the beach a fair bit this year! Some days it was so hot that on one of them I managed to get sun burned in just a couple of hours even with SPF30 cream on! The rain we got was a cracking amount too… If I were to guess it looked like a full days worth of rain fell in 20 minutes. It went from totally bone dry to a sodden puddle laden field in just 20 minutes. I have never witnessed rain that heavy before.

The rain was so bad that 2 of us had to move our tents because a few inches of water had settled underneath! My tent is a few years old now so it’s not as waterproof as it once was. That showed during this rain because it leaked from every possible place it could. Even after moving it the rain was still coming through on light showers so I had to put a spare tarpaulin over the main sleeping area to keep it dry. Thankfully the underside wasn’t leaking as much. I’m still going to get myself a new tent though as it is about time it was replaced.

Getting onto the island was fun this year too. When I arrived (on my own this time but meeting up with others, many of us arrived at different times this year), I was stopped in my tracks at the last 500 yards by the tide. For those who don’t know, the island is not an island as such but it is tidal. Some days the tide covers the road by about 1-2ft making it dangerous to cross by car. I knew it was going to be covered but wasn’t sure how much. Anyway I waited in line for about 45 minutes before I was able to get across. I didn’t want to go through the salty water, but everyone else was doing it and I would have held up the line if I didn’t move along! Thankfully it wasn’t a lot and the excessive rain we had some days cleaned off most if not all of the salt.

As repeated every year, my power supply box was once again a center of attention and use by everybody on the trip. One of the guys met a friend on the site and even showed it to him, and he was also impressed. This year not only were phones were charged and Nintendo DS’s charged, even some portable speakers which give much better sound quality than a phone needed a charge too. This year however was different in one more way. Unlike previous years, this time I took along a small solar panel. The last time I did this was in 2006 when I took my jump start pack, CCFL and 2×1.5w solar panels. The panel I took this year was a small 10w panel I got off ebay for £20. 10w doesn’t sound like much (and in reality it’s not) but it was enough to prevent the battery going too low.

Last year the power box was so dead that the LED voltmeter didn’t even register a single light. This year, we returned home with 60-70% showing on the box and that was even with much more use of the power inverter compared to other years. I’d call that a big success. I don’t know how much power was generated or used but clearly it was quite a lot over the course of the week. Next year I will have a new setup for the box which will incorporate a digital meter run off of an Arduino along with current sensors (hopefully) which will be able to tell me how much power I have generated and how much I have used. I do need to do some more testing and experimenting with these however. The blog will be kept up to date on developments with this.

Next year I hope to have a 20w panel, a smaller battery (to save weight), the new circuit based on the Arduino, more powerful USB sockets and more of them in general, an integrated and hard-wired inverter with a socket on the front and perhaps more. It’s a big project but it’s keeping my basic electronics hobby happy.

Anyway, until next time…

It’s been well over a month since I last posted so it’s probably time to update you with going’s on.

Late last month I went on my annual camping trip for a week. I say annual, because I’ve only been going once a year the past few years. It’s a nice holiday and doesn’t cost much either. The general crappy economy these days makes it hard for anyone to save up and go abroad, so I just don’t bother (not that I ever tried to anyway). I’m happy holidaying in the UK because there’s still so many places I haven’t been.

This year we had a slight change of scenery and went to Shell Island in West Wales. We had never been before but we had heard all sorts of positive reviews about the place. However being a group of 9 guys we were worried we might not be able to get on the site. Their rules do state no single sex groups, but having read reviews online they seemed to accept groups anyway. We decided to take our chances. The next thing stopping us getting on was the fact that they’re so popular. Even though they have 300 acres of fields to camp on, they still get full all year round. We kept an eye on the numbers on the site by keeping up to date with their Twitter/Facebook pages. The day we left they were 85% full and expecting to go full before lunch, and we didn’t get there until late. Thankfully, we did get on. How close it was I don’t know.

First impressions of the site weren’t brilliant but as the week went on we grew to like it. Even though there were some issues regarding facilities, we always worked around it without much fuss. There weren’t many toilets for hundreds of people to share, and those that were around, besides the main block, were all porta-loo’s. And believe me now, they weren’t very friendly looking or smelling! Showers were also lax, but we never had to wait long providing we went at least an hour after they opened. Their opening times for the showers was a bit odd too – 8am-1pm and 4pm-10pm, the rest of the time they were closed for cleaning or for night time. I’d have expected them to be open more hours than that.

The facilities shop wise on the camp were brilliant. They had a fully stocked shop fully of food, they also had a supplies shop for camping equipment including gas/charcoal etc. They also had a gift shop too which I’m told sells pretty nice chocolate, fudge and other sweets.

The one thing that we thought would annoy us but didn’t was the fact that the tides affect whether you can get on or off the site. The road in and out is tidal, but we were lucky enough to hit on a week where it wasn’t flooding during the day, only early morning/late evening, so we missed it whenever we went out. Had we hit it, we would have had to wait up to 4-6 hours for it to subside! That wouldn’t have been fun.

The weather that week wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t horrible the whole time either. The first half of the week was really hot, and I got sun burnt the 2nd day we were there. There was a modest amount of wind as well but that didn’t bother us too much. We just had to make sure the tents were well anchored down. We did a good job I think, nothing ended up blowing away even with the strongest gusts.

The 2nd half of the week it turned nasty – it rained on and off every day with little sun in between. It rained so hard one night that the guys in the main tent woke up completely soaked! We ended up having to move the tent about 10 meters away to a drier patch in the wind and rain. That was an experience I hope we don’t have to repeat because it was an absolute pain. The sleeping bags and clothes had to be taken to the launderette, which thankfully there is one on site with driers and washers. Had it not been there it could well have ruined the holiday for those in the main tent.

Small issues aside, it was a good week. We had some good laughs and visited a couple of nice areas. We did keep ourselves to the campsite most of the time though as everyone was always busy doing something else that it was hard to get everyone together.

I have to say I did particularly enjoy one part and that was the windy roads. They were really nice to drive on – challenging but not so overwhelming that it tired you out too quickly. The drive home was exceptionally nice as we didn’t have to wait for anyone. Going there we travel together, on the way home we split up. Which is just as well, because the trailer suffered a flat tire and we had no spare. The guys towing it had to hunt for a replacement. They were lucky a random guy offered them his for the cost of a new one because nowhere was open that time of the day. He saved the day!

We’re definitely considering going back there next year though. It wasn’t expensive and there was still loads to explore that we didn’t get chance to do.