The first camping trip of the year is always the one where the kit does not fit. A family with a large tent, or a group going together, quickly discovers that camping equipment is enormously bulky for how little it weighs, and that a car packed to the roof leaves nobody anywhere to sit. Camping gear van hire is a straightforward solution for a group trip, and arranging van hire in Warrington for a weekend away is usually simpler than people expect.
Bulk Without Weight Changes the Calculation
Tents, airbeds, sleeping bags, chairs, cool boxes, stoves and the box of things nobody can name take up a great deal of room and weigh very little. That means you are buying cubic space rather than payload, and it means a van will look full long before it is anywhere near loaded. It also means the load will move if it is not packed tightly, because there is not enough mass in it to keep anything in place. Pack from the bulkhead backwards and fill the gaps rather than leaving a loose heap that redistributes itself on the first roundabout.
Packing in the Order You Will Pitch
The tent goes up first, so it should come off first, which means it goes in last. That sounds obvious and is almost never done, because the tent is the biggest item and instinct says put it in first. Resist that. Load the things you will not need until the second day at the front, then the cooking and sleeping kit, then the tent and the mallet and the groundsheet at the back within easy reach. Arriving at a site in fading light and having to unload the entire van to reach the tent is a specific kind of misery that one minute of planning avoids.
Choosing a Body for a Group Trip
For a family or a small group the short wheelbase low roof van is usually plenty and has the advantage of being easy to park at a campsite, where pitches and access roads are not designed around large vehicles. Larger groups or anyone carrying a trailer tent or a lot of chairs and gazebos will want more room. Everything we run sits within three and a half tonnes gross vehicle weight and is driveable on a standard category B car licence, so whoever in the group is driving does not need anything unusual.
Keeping Canvas Dry and Packing It Wet
The one rule with tents is that they must not be stored damp, and the one certainty about a British camping trip is that at some point the tent will be wet. Packing a wet tent for the journey home is unavoidable and perfectly fine for a few hours. Leaving it packed for a week afterwards is how tents grow mould and how the waterproofing gets ruined. Keep the wet tent separate from dry bedding on the way home rather than burying it under sleeping bags, and get it out and aired as soon as you are back rather than putting the whole load straight into a garage.
Site Access, Pitching and Getting the Van In
Campsites vary enormously in how much vehicle access they allow. Some let you drive to the pitch, many restrict vehicles to a car park with a barrow for the walk in, and a few have height barriers that a van will not clear. Ring the site and ask before you book the van, because a long carry across a field changes how you pack entirely. Groups heading out from Ashton in Makerfield van hire bookings towards north Wales or the Lakes usually find the drive is the easy part and the site access is what needs the phone call.
Booking Around a Weekend Away
This is the practical detail that matters most for a camping trip. Our depot on Tilley Street at the main entrance to Cockhedge Shopping Centre beside Asda is open Monday to Saturday from 8am until 4pm and closed on Sunday, so a weekend away means collecting on a Friday or Saturday and planning the return for the Monday rather than assuming a Sunday drop. Bring your photocard licence and a DVLA check code, there is no deposit on most vehicles, and free secure parking on site means the driver’s car stays here. You can talk dates through with the team via our contact us page.
Coming Home and Unloading Properly
The return journey is where camping trips are quietly ruined. Everything is packed damp, in a hurry, by people who want to be home, and then the van sits on a driveway while everyone has a bath. Airbeds packed wet grow mould, cool boxes left sealed with a little water in them are unpleasant a week later, and a stove packed with a half used gas canister needs storing sensibly rather than left in a hot vehicle. Take twenty minutes when you get back to pull out anything wet and anything with fuel in it, even if the rest waits until morning. If several families have gone together, sort the kit by household as it comes off rather than into one pile, because working out whose airbed is whose after the event is how camping groups lose equipment permanently.
Tell us the group size and whether you need the van across the weekend and we will work out the simplest arrangement. Call the depot on 01925 396 222 once your trip dates are fixed.
