Camping in Italy: food, gear and picking a pitch

Four days of food on a campsite comes down to three habits: buy cold items in small amounts and often, keep the cool box full and out of the sun, and cook what spoils first. A portable cool box with a block of ice or two frozen bottles will hold safe temperatures for about two days if it stays closed and shaded, so plan a shop or a refill of ice on day three. Everything else, pasta, rice, tinned fish, bread, fruit and vegetables that keep, lives in a crate and does not need cold at all.

How do you keep food cool for four days on a campsite?

A cool box is not a fridge, and treating it like one is where most first trips go wrong. Fill the empty space with more cold mass rather than more air: a full box stays cold far longer than a half empty one. Freeze two one and a half litre bottles of water at home, use them as the cold source, and drink them as they thaw. Keep the box in the deepest shade you have, cover it with a towel or a sleeping mat, and open it once in the morning and once in the evening, not every time someone wants a yoghurt.

Divide the food by days. Day one and day two can carry meat, soft cheese, milk and salad. Day three and day four should lean on eggs, hard cheese, cured meat, tinned goods, dried pasta and whatever vegetables survived. Anything that has been out of the cold for hours goes in the bin, not back in the box.

For a wider set of ideas on how Italian campers organise this, from cool box practice to four day menus and leftovers, Italian camping food and gear notes set out the same routines in more detail. The principle holds either way: cold is a budget you spend, not a state you own.

A breakfast prepared the night before

Morning on a campsite is the worst time to cook. The stove is cold, the table is damp, and everyone is hungry at once. Preparing breakfast the night before removes all of it.

Soak oats in milk or water with dried fruit in a sealed jar and leave it in the cool box overnight. Boil eggs while the dinner pots are still hot, and they will keep until morning. Cut fruit into a bowl, cover it, and put it in the cold. Bread bought in the evening is still good at eight. Coffee can be made in a moka pot on one burner in four minutes, or replaced with a flask of hot water poured over a filter cone.

The gain is not only time. A breakfast that needs no cooking means no washing up before a walk, no gas burned early, and no argument about who is on the stove. It also means you can leave the pitch at seven if the day is going to be hot.

Which tent, mat and stove suit a first season?

For a first season, buy for the trips you will actually take, which usually means three season camping in Ireland and short summer trips abroad, not alpine conditions.

A tent of two to three person size for two people gives room for bags and a dry porch. Look for a double skin design, aluminium poles rather than fibreglass, a hydrostatic head of at least 3000 mm on the flysheet, and a porch deep enough to cook in or to leave wet boots. A tunnel or dome shape sheds wind better than a cabin tent, and a cabin tent is easier to stand in. Pick one, not both.

For sleeping, the mat matters more than the bag. A closed cell foam mat is cheap, indestructible and cold underneath. A self inflating mat of five centimetres is comfortable and packs small. An air mat is the most comfortable of the three and the most likely to fail. Whatever you choose, the insulation value, not the thickness, is what keeps you warm, because the ground pulls heat out of you all night.

A single burner gas stove with a screw on cartridge is enough for two people and one pot. Add a small folding wind shield, a lighter as backup to the ignition, and a pot with a lid. A lid halves the gas. If you plan to cook properly rather than boil water, a two burner stove or a small gas grill changes the trip, but it also changes the packing.

How do you choose a pitch by shade, wind and season?

Pitch choice is the single decision that most affects how a night goes, and it is made in about two minutes.

In summer in Italy, shade is the priority. Look for trees on the east side of the pitch, so the tent is cool in the morning and the sun is off it by early afternoon. Avoid pitching directly under a tree with dead branches, and avoid the lowest ground in the field, which collects cold air and, in a storm, water.

In spring and autumn, sun is the priority. A pitch in the open, facing south or south east, dries the tent and warms the inside in the evening. Wind matters more than most people expect: a line of trees or a hedge on the west side breaks the worst of it, and pitching with the lowest end of the tent into the wind reduces flapping. On the coast, sand and salt mean longer pegs and a firmer footing, and the wind usually arrives in the afternoon.

In winter, drainage and shelter beat everything. Higher ground, no overhanging branches, and a pitch that gets morning sun.

Drying a tent, sleeping well and reading the season

A wet tent packed away is a tent that smells by the third day. If there is any sun at all, drape the flysheet over a line or a hedge for an hour before you leave, and if there is none, wipe it down with a cloth and dry it properly at home within a day or two. Never store a tent damp.

Sleeping well on a campsite is mostly about three things: a mat that insulates, a bag rated for the night temperature rather than the day, and earplugs. Campsites are noisy in a way that is easy to forget. A eye mask helps in Italy in June, when it is light until ten and bright again at half five.

Reading the season is the last skill. In Italy, the coast in July and August is hot, crowded and expensive, and the mountains are the better choice. June and September give warm days, cool nights and space on the pitches. The Dolomites in summer can turn cold and stormy in an afternoon, so an early start and an early return to camp is the pattern. In Puglia, the sea stays warm into October. In Tuscany, the inland hills are pleasant in May and again in September, and the agricampings, working farms that take a few tents, are often quieter than the coastal sites.

Four days of menus and what to do with leftovers

A four day menu that works is built on repetition with small changes, not on four different dinners.

Day one: pasta with a sauce made from tinned tomatoes, garlic and olive oil, with grated hard cheese. Day two: rice cooked with stock and whatever vegetables are left, with tinned tuna or chickpeas. Day three: eggs, bread and a salad, or a one pot dish of potatoes, onions and cured meat. Day four: whatever remains, turned into a soup or a frittata, with bread.

Leftovers are the ingredient of the next meal, not a problem. Boiled potatoes become a frittata. Cooked pasta becomes a salad with oil, vinegar and tinned fish. Half a tin of tomatoes goes into the next day's rice. Anything you cannot use within a day goes in the bin, and the bin goes to the campsite waste point that evening, not the next morning.

Buy little, buy often, and let the market decide the menu. That is the whole method, and it works from a tent in Mayo to a pitch in Tuscany.