Are you sleeping in tents or hammocks? Are you taking a big mess tent, or are you camping lighter? However you’re intending to camp, it’s always best to have a backup, and a decent tent for food & equipment storage – even if you are sleeping in hammocks or even bivouacs, you should have secure storage to keep the wildlife away from your food.

You also don’t want to take too much tentage. If you’ve only got four or five Scouts, you won’t want to take a big mess tent – a Coleman style shelter will be plenty.

What are you intending to cook on? If you’re planning on cooking exclusively on a wood fire, it’s sensible to take a gas stove just in case as well. But are you taking two or three briefcase stoves, or a cast iron stove? The briefcase stoves are a lot lighter and take up less room, but if you’ll be doing a lot of cooking, you’ll need to take more gas canisters, so perhaps the cast iron stove with the single large gas bottle would be a better idea.

Refer back to your menu – what utensils will you need, and how many billies and frying pans? You might want to have a dry run when you’ve got all of the kit available – pretend that you’re cooking each meal, and take the items that you need. Otherwise you might take too much or too little.

We do have a crate with plates, bowls, mugs and cutlery, if you wanted to take those rather than asking everyone to bring their own. It’s sometimes easier to do it that way.

For food storage, you’ll need solid crates and cool boxes. Any food that isn’t in a tin or jar must be contained in a solid container. Anything that’s in plastic bags, cardboard, or just loose (fruit for e.g.) must be contained in something wildlife-proof. With chilled items, remember that you need to keep raw meat separate from other items, so have two cool boxes. If you’re camping in the summer, you’ll need to be more careful about keeping things cool – perhaps it might be a good idea to take the gas fridge.

If you’re running your own activities, remember that you’ll need to take absolutely everything you need with you (apart from any natural materials, such as sticks etc.). So, refer back to your activity plan, and again, have a dry run of each activity to make sure you’ve got everything you need.

Will you need to take the trailer, or have you got enough room in the cars that will be taking you to camp? Kit always takes up more room than you think it will, and remember, the cars also need to take the food, the Scouts’ kit, oh, and the Scouts themselves, including you.