Base Camping – Camping with a Base Camp

What is Base Camping?

Base Camping is Camping where your planned expedition has a Home Base, such as a House tent, Family Tent or Van of some sort.

When you go Base Camping rather than Hiking Camping it gives you the added ability to have a Home Base which you can sleep in, store all your supplies and equipment in, and have a Headquarters where you can be sheltered from the elements to plan your day’s activities, not to mention providing you and your group somewhere to eat and socialise.

Base Camping, Home Base Camping, Truck Camping or Car Camping are all literally the same thing and are all a means of providing you and your group with all of the benefits I’ve just pointed out above and more.

Why go Base Camping?

Base Camping gives you the ability to cover an extremely large area of operations thoroughly. You can take with you more than enough equipment for multi day excursions with the ability to leave most of the equipment securely locked away in the home base without having to carry it around with you.

Base Camping can be as basic as leaving your stuff behind when you go off hiking and exploring whilst using a van or tent as your home base, to full on “Glamping” where your home base is a Luxury Family Tent with Rooms, a Kitchen and Portable Lavatory. The choice is entirely yours.

Base Camping is usually a far more relaxing and less stressful form of Camping than Wild Camping, Backpacking or Hiking. This is due to the fact that you aren’t carrying an inordinate amount of equipment around with you, but you are able to have all of those luxurious extras waiting for you back at your home base at the end of a long tough hike.

What equipment should I take for Base Camping?

Usually when we are making kit lists for our expeditions we are cutting back to as many lightweight basics as we can get away with. But, in the case of Base Camping, your imagination is your limit. Take whatever you can fit on your transport and that will make your life more comfortable.

We take part in a lot of DofE Adventurous Journeys and Training Weekends and always have a Base Camp in which to store our equipment, make plans, have briefings, cook, eat and sleep. Read more....