The perils of a Roof Tent in the UK #camping

It's beautiful weather, it's not too hot, it's not too sunny, not too cold, no rain so far. So it should be good weather for a good camp. I'm with my buddy Ben and yeah we've got a nice spot we're heading towards by a river down here. So I'm just going to get through this gate here. Get set up with the awnings and roof tents and cook some nice food and have a good time with you guys. We're here right by the river. It just flows around the corner there. So this is kind of as close as you can get really. It's quite uneven on the riverbank but a beautiful spot. There is a fire pit area there already and some wood waiting for us which is nice. And I think it's time to get set up. Awning time. New stove time. I've got a BRS, I can't remember what you call it, a grill stove or something. Let's get this out and have a little look at it. So if I undo this latch on the front here I can open up the top. These kind of wind guards here and the bottom should open up. Gas hose goes on this side. So I've got these handles to use with these kind of trays of which we have a couple. The clever thing is, maybe if I take this up, the grill itself can turn over and so you can you know heat from the top or from underneath. Something new and I do like to try new things, new ways of cooking and different camp equipment. Get the gas canister on here and it has a regulator on it which appears to be working. Right so now we're here I'm going to unplug this from the truck just make sure I don't run my battery down. It's got its own battery so it should go for the next couple of days. And if I open up the fridge I need some cheese and bits. Right so I'm gonna make a toasty, it seemed right with that stove. I just need to gauge cheese here. That's fine and I've got some caramelized onion chutney here as well. Quite nice in there. Ignition on this thing doesn't seem to be working so there we go. Thing turned in with our toasties. Big dark cloud on the horizon. Moved the tray down a bit and just turned the gas down a bit as well. I think we'll be okay. It's giving me them kind of vibes of a caravan holiday in the 80s. How are we doing? Oh I'd say that's about perfect. The side that the gas canister on is definitely hotter than the other side but uh that'll do nicely. And you've got heat up here I assume you can cook while doing that. Thank you mate. You're welcome. Onion chutney. It is. Toast is nice and simple because I thought we'd get here we want to eat because it's you know a little bit past lunchtime and the weather just keeps changing. A second ago it was boiling hot weren't it? Sun was out blazing and then that big cloud's come over and it's cooled down and it's a bit dark as well. But uh if you don't mind we'll still have a good time. My little 3D printed things that go in the track here for the lanterns. They've just got carabiners attached. All right so I'm going to get these full up so when it gets darker later it's all soaked into the wick and I've just got paraffin in here. The last hook is just going to be for the bug repeller later. Got to move that out of the way before I headbutt it. A bit of blue sky now after doing the washing up so gonna chill for a bit and then get the fire pit out and ready and kind of sort everything out for the evening I think. Just enjoying this spot for now. Just want to take a second to say how posh both these chairs are. Mine's got a cooler. Mine's an old man emu one. Mine's actually got a cooler as well. Oh. On the side there. Of course it has. Yeah. I'm going to remove this fire pit and use my own because it's a bit higher, a bit bigger, holds more wood. It's just better than the bottom of a barrel. I've got the big Winnowell fire pit with me so we can do some proper cooking today. I've got a new toy MC Ranch Overland. This is a fire reflector um you know wind guard whatever you want to call it and it's very posh. It also cost me a fortune to get to the UK. So like I said this is MC Ranch Overland. Handmade I believe, well kind of laser cut, in America and yeah they're not cheap but some pretty thick gauged aluminium, some nice hinges, nicely made and yeah obviously they pay quite a bit extra to get it to the UK. I've been an R'ing for a long time over this so I finally bit the bullet. This is Ben's roof tent. You've probably seen it in the background. It's pretty interesting. It opens up in both directions. Pretty roomy. It's by, who's it by? Wildland. Wildland and novel thing about this is it's really hard for you to see but there is no solid bottom on this and the advantage of that is it being metal like the shell of mine means it's not getting any kind of condensation in there. It's not kind of you know going through the steel bolts and it's not got that mould problem that I've had with mine. So pretty cool. Yeah it's a pretty interesting roof tent Dan. I'm a little bit jealous but I think it'd be a little bit too big for Patty. You're on Instagram now aren't you? I am. I've just started Selma the Shogun. I'll link that below. I don't know if a link works to Instagram, it's all very weird isn't it but I'll link it below anyway if you want to check that out. Chips for the fire. A bit of prep going on here. Ben's actually cooking dinner tonight and yeah I'm gonna be cooking dinner on our next night but these are the chips to go with what? Pre-brewed chicken and corn on the cob. The weather has remained pretty much the same, just clouds going over and stuff but it's quite pleasant. You can hear the harvesting going on and baling up and that in the fields around because this is all kind of farmland around here. Very pleasant. Gotta be lazy and use wood wool because why not? It's the smaller bits really. I think it's beer time. If you can hear they're baling up in the field behind us there and it's getting quite close to this end of the field. Just grabbed a beer, just got some neck oils and oh my god it's cold. It's so nice having the fridge out again. Cheers sir. He's got a Brewdog, new Ambrow one by Brewdog, like a Doombar. Cheers. Oh my word that's cold. I may actually have to turn that fridge down or up a little. I've got it set minus two but I need the battery to last so I may as well put it to like zero or plus one or something. And you can do it in your hat now. And I can do it in the hat? Right so here we can see it's got 99% still and yeah target temperature that's uh oh I didn't realize it did it like that. I'll put it at zero. There we go. Fire wasn't really cooperating so put some smaller stuff on there. Should be fine now. I think this wood that the farmer gave us might not be 100% seasoned so just chopping down a little bit, a little bit smaller pieces just to keep it going nicely. It's smouldering but it's So this is not pretty because I've got my brush but some curry sauce. This has already been marinating for like a couple of hours at least anyway on the spice blend. Oh yeah. Yeah this um this spice blend is really quite lemony as well which I quite like. Chicken on there and test this oil which I've got in here. That is ready to fry. Rather hot. Chipos! The no chicken burger. Oh yeah. You can probably hear the combine harvester it's going up and down up and down but when it's down this end it's pretty loud. It's like in the drawer really they've got to do what they've got to do you know when it's dry or we don't eat. All right we're ready. I'm going to douse mine in some bourbon chipotle. I'll put some on mine as well mate. Dinner time. I want to get one of them chips in my gob straight away. Straight out of the oil. Nice. Try your chicken. Yeah. I did it on the um Audi little camp whatever one it was. Because they sell their own one. Oh little bugger trying to bite me. I got him. Hello. So I was about to put up my outtask lantern that you've seen me use a few times. The tripod one and uh they've sent this uh case along. Some new accessories. You can access the button in there. How do you do this one? Is this a press and hold? Yeah. And then you can still use it like a torch inside the actual case there. Or obviously you can take it out which I'll do. Put the tripod out and I've also got these which are like for using it as a lantern. Yellow, red and white. You stick it over the top there. So diffuses the light. You can have it on the orange mode too. So I was here. Just going to use that as our little lantern right now. Oh there we go. Maybe behind. I was going to say no to my eyeliner. Perfect. That's actually going pretty well. Yeah not bad now. I mean once we've got the heat on it. Right I'm in the roof tent. It's uh very cozy in here. Especially now with the mattress topper that I've got. Very very comfortable indeed. Got the light on plugged into the power bank. And uh yeah very nice indeed. Still a couple of little stains from the mold that I got over the winter. I'll carry on working on that but uh yeah it's fine. Yeah so I'm gonna zip up and get cozy. It's not even that cold to be honest. I'll see you guys in the morning. Good morning. It's uh just been raining. It seems to have stopped now. But uh I can hear a harvester or something in the distance. It's uh about eight in the morning I think. A bit of a lay-in for camping really. So very moist in here. Yeah definitely quite a lot of condensation from last night. It's gonna help with my mold. So I'll show you what I mean by the mold patches in here. Um it's just a couple that I've missed when I was using the um mold spray. But uh it is what it is. That's uh using one of these metal shelled roof tents in the UK. Happened to Simon Bloke in the woods as well. You just have to get it out and aerate it every now and again. I suppose it should get up. It's a beautiful spot. This little beach by the river is lovely. Nice for your morning cup of tea. But uh altogether it's very nice. There is a flight path. You can just about sometimes hear a road off in the distance. But um it's England. That's always gonna happen. It is pretty remote otherwise. I suppose we'll go over there and see what he wants for breakfast. So who's doing breakfast? I did dinner so. No we're doing it like that are we? We're alternating. All right that's fine. What we got? We've got um cowboy beans and toast. Uh yeah I don't think we're gonna do it on the fire. It's just a bit of a palaver with the wood. We've run out of oil as well. Came in useful though. All right yeah on the stove. Got a tiny bit of oil in here just to start the bacon off. I thought we'd come under the awning here. Just for breakfast and for packing up. Got some haricot beans. Some tomatoes. I've got some of my bourbon chipotle barbecue sauce like we had last night. And obviously the bacon there as well. And that should make quite a nice barbecue beans. There's our bacon. It's uh raining a bit harder now. So in with the haricot beans. I don't know if I'm gonna need both of these tins. Some nice tomatoes. Barbecue sauce. Yeah I'll put the lid on. I'll let this cook down a bit. Barbecueness. Available now. Kidssurvival.com. I'm going to do some toast. So I'm just going to melt some butter in the pan here. And kind of fry the bread basically. Is it free? I believe we are about done here. So to be honest I would have left them a little longer but uh nice when they homogenize together. Don't worry Ben's getting some too. Okay. Here we go. Actually smells really nice. The bread here. Oh yeah. Would be nice. You know I think it needs a bit more of. Yeah it smells stronger than it actually tastes with the barbecue sauce. All right guys we're off to spot number two for our second night so see you there. Well we're in this beautiful little bit of forest here and we've got a load of monkey puzzle trees to camp under which is pretty unusual especially to see ones of this size and age in the UK. We were pondering if it was a part of an estate at some point and they were planted then. It's obviously they're not natural here but uh very interesting. Yeah we've navigated around all these stumps and found a couple of pitches we'll get set up. As it's so unusual I wanted to show you how Ben's tent goes up because it goes up on this side first then on this side it opens up once again. When you unlatch it. Look at that both struts come out that kind of same piece there. Diagonal piece. Even a little bit of like an awning. That ain't gonna bloody work is it? It's like a party. This is the one I'm interested in. Nice but it's definitely a bit stale. They didn't yesterday bought them weren't they? No Sunday. Oh was it? So two days ago. Nice though. It's a bit tough. Pretty hard to see but you can see the boughs up there which we're guessing will come and collect them today so there may be a bit more noise tonight. It's only once a year. It looks like we've got plenty of firewood here. Before I just show you one of the dead branches off of the monkey puzzles. So weird aren't they? Almost like a pineapple. I think they're native. What did you say? Chile they're native too? Chilean national tree. Yeah so amazing they actually can grow like that here. This is a pile of wood that was here this is the wood we brought from the other place so some of it's already split down but we know it's no good and this stuff down here is from kiln dried we picked up on the way because we didn't want another night like last night. It's raining again. You know when you just take a second you're like is it just going to be a few drops? No it's raining so we've darted under the awning here so I'm glad I put it out. I thought at worst it could be just to dry it off but apparently it's becoming useful. Someone's got a beer. It's raining. Beer time, beer o'clock. I just want to taste the steak. Did you want some? I'm good for now. I'm attached to it. Steaky steak. I think these are not falling out. They're not going to be the easiest things to eat. Oh man that's good. And some extra steak. That's a really nice steak. While the stove's out I'm just going to do some chicharron to go with dinner which is basically pork crackling. So we're just going to boil it up and cook it through first. Onto the pork to go in the oil. It's not super hot. That'll be the next stage. I'm saying it's not super hot. It's getting hot. This pork's a little bit explodey. Jesus. I've got a shield. Oh my god. This is the bit I'm actually quite scared of. The hot frying part. It's probably not as hot as I'd hoped. We're getting there. I think it's far from perfect but actually not that bad. A little bit of salt on it. I might chop it down a bit smaller for the burritos later. Just add a bit of texture. I might try a bit. Oh wow. You probably heard that. So late afternoon now. Ben went to have a nap while I was doing the chicharron. I figured I was just trying to avoid getting exploded on with the hot fat. But they're all done now. Mostly cleaned up and it is currently raining so probably wait for this to pass before lighting the fire as dinner's going to take quite a while. Got some meat to do in the dutch oven for the burritos. I'm just gonna sit here enjoy the rain for a bit until I can do that. I've got oil everywhere now on my trousers and I've also melted them as well by the fire yesterday. I think these ones will have to go in the bin. So I've got some pork shoulder here. That's just going straight in the dutch oven and I've got a experimental rub here. I'm just going to put all over it and to kind of braise this I'm going to be using some coke. I'll put a little water in as well and this is going to form our pulled pork for the burrito. I feel like I needed that. It's raining pretty hard now. Now I've lit the fire. It can't hold off for so long though. We need to cook this pork. It's going to take a couple of hours but it should be fine. It's not going to rain at all. It rained yesterday, it's raining last night. It's good, it's fine. It's still raining pretty heavy actually and we're cowering under the awning away from the fire. Not that we're going to be right by it anyway because of the heat but yeah dutch oven's over the top there baking away and hopefully at some point we'll be able to go over there as well. Might as well have you. Yeah, why not. It was a bumpy trail coming up. Cheers man. Cheers sir. Rain seems to have stopped. A bit dripping out the trees but I guess we'll move over by the fire soon. There's no rush. Oh, oh, number two. That pork's well underway so it's time to get some other bits and bobs ready. This avocado feels not quite as ripe as I would have hoped. It's a little firmer than I would have liked. Here we go. My avocado done. I'm just gonna try to thinly slice some red onion and I've got some cilantro or coriander leaf here, whatever you'd like to call it. All right so we'll get this red onion in this bowl. I'll give that a good squeeze for that kind of lime kind of pickling. If there's another lime I might grab some of that in there too. That'll be nice and ready when we need it. It looked a little while ago. Let's have another look now and keep the chain out of the meat. That'll pull nicely. Give this a bit of a pull and we're right back in a little bit liquid and we can build our burritos. I'm just gonna add a little bit of this spice in here to mix in. All right so I guess I'll do yours first. So you want a bit of everything in there? Yes please. So I have some avocado as a base. Get some of this meat in and this is that chicharron. So careful with your teeth. The onion. Oh I guess I didn't do rice in the end. I was umming and ahhing. It was an iron. Is that enough? Do you want a bit more meat? Yeah a bit more meat. I mean we can have more but potentially one. Cheers. I'm not toasting them. I can't be bothered. Crunchy bit. Really good. It's about the best bit. Now you can have a bit in every mouthful. Oh that's good. I'm glad I did the chicharron. You can occasionally hear farm equipment. I think they've got quite a lot of fields around here and you know they're up against it with harvesting. Thank you. Would you look at that for a clean plate club? That was perfect. We did have one more and said half each but um that was bloody lovely. Eating good man. Eating good. Made some hot chocolate. Posh hot chocolate. Posh hot. Oh that is unusual. We've just been chilling this evening really playing around with the fire, digesting our burritos. Oh lots of toasting. Yeah we're into twilight. So well our breakfast is going to be a cheese and onion roll. We've decided against the breakfast burritos because I think we've both just been living a bit well. So we've got ourselves packed up. We're gonna have these put our chairs away and I think we're gonna make our way home. So after a little bit of an outro I'll say goodbye and thank you for watching and thanks Ben for coming along. Thanks very much for having me mate. And see you guys well soon.