These are the most useful things we have got for the van:
- Stanley Camp Mugs These are great, solid, and keep your drink hot, so good that we got the tumblers too, one big benefit of these in a van, is that you can make your tea/coffee and then cook your breakfast, and your drink will still be hot, handy if you have limited cooking resources…
- Lakeland Semi Skimmed Milk Sticks - these are handy to have for a quick cuppa in the van.
- Colapz “Collapsible 2-in-1 Water Carrier & Bucket” this is useful for filling up onsite, we also fill it with water and drink from it (it has a tap) rather than drinking from the onboard water supply. We also have the Flexi-Pipe Kit which has been useful on the couple of fully-serviced pitches we’ve been to.
- USB rechargeable fan - really handy for cooling down the fan before sleep time
- Outwell Collaps washing base w/handle & lid - great for carrying dishes to and from the washing up area on-site, the top doubles as a tray!
Ridgemonkey Connect Deep Pan & Griddle Edition perfect for cooking pasta in- We have replaced this with a GSI Outdoors Pinnacle Base Camper I love the Ridgemonkey gear but the Pinnacle set has lids with integrated straining holes, which are nice and easy to use, we tend to drain our pasta outside the van, rather than putting starchy water down the sink and so the integrated lid is definitely easier than using a colander and tipping back in.
- Cosy blankets for the seats - we bought a couple of warm blankets which go on top of our sofas mostly to protect the buttons, but they can also be used to keep warm outside
- iBeanie Quishion these sound a bit odd, but they are solid enough cushions, and during the coldest nights away, I did unzip it and pull it over myself as a quilt!
Vango Star 300 rechargeable lantern, this provides a nice soft light for in the evenings, and it’s portable so we can take it outside and we use this as our main lighting in the van in the evenings.I dropped this while a USB cable was plugged in to charge and broke it. On the upside, the lighting in the new van is way nicer so we don’t need it.Panda Bamboo mattress topper this has made a huge difference in the comfort of the bed, it is heavy (we have a super-kingsize) and bulky, but we couldn’t do without it.We don’t need this because we have fixed beds in the new van.- Cadac Paella Pan 30 this is a great frying pan, coming with a lid, and it can be used on a Cadac Safari 30 BBQ, or on our gas hob, cleans up really well, only one downside, the handles heat up which you need to be careful of.
- Cadac Safari Chef 30 - this packs up into a bag that fits under our sofa.
- Trangia 25 stove kit, we’ve got the gas burner for this, and it definitely performs better than the Cadac in windy weather.
- Duvalay sleepings bags - they’re not cheap! But they are comfortable and look good, bonus points for being able to slot any single quilt into the bag, we bought it with a 4.5 tog “summer” quilt, but we’ve put in a 2.5 tog quilt as it’s been warm in the van.
- Peggy Peg Quick Release clamps and Croc-adapters
- These are great for hanging towels out to dry on an extended roll-out awning.