How to Set Up a Campsite You Actually Want to Sit In

Four zones, and the order you build them in

Walk the pitch before you unload anything. Look at where the sun sets, where the wind is coming from, where the ground slopes, and where you will walk to the toilets in the dark. Five minutes of that saves a weekend of shuffling around a tent you pitched in the one wet hollow on the site.

1. The tent

The tent is the only thing that genuinely cannot be moved once it is up, so it chooses first. Look for slightly raised ground rather than the flattest patch, because the flattest patch is usually the hollow that water runs into. Clear stones and sticks, and check what is above you — dead branches are a real hazard and the reason experienced campers look up before they look down.

Point the door away from the prevailing wind, and if you can, so it catches early sun. A tent with morning light on it dries its own condensation while you have breakfast, which is the difference between packing a dry tent and dealing with a damp one at home. Sleeping heads uphill on any slope you cannot avoid, always.

2. The kitchen

Downwind of the tent, so cooking smells and smoke do not blow into it, and at least a short walk away, because food near a tent is what attracts animals to a tent. Use the site's picnic table if there is one, and if there is not, a folding cook station gives you the working surface that a stove on the ground never will.

Set it up as a station rather than a pile: stove at one end, prep space in the middle, washing-up at the far end, bin bag hanging off the side. It sounds fussy and it is the difference between cooking dinner and hunting for the tongs. The camp kitchen setup guide has the full layout, and washing up is a great deal easier when its place is decided in daylight.

3. The fire and the seating

The fire goes in the provided ring, and everything else arranges itself around it. Set chairs in a horseshoe rather than a closed circle: a closed circle means somebody has to climb over a chair or step near the fire to get out, and that is the movement that causes accidents. The open side faces the tent, which is where people walk.

Leave a clear path from the seating to the tents and to the site exit, and keep it clear of guy lines. Guy lines at ankle height in the dark are the most common camping trip hazard there is, and a strip of reflective line or a few clip-on markers fixes it for almost nothing. The rest of the fire practice is in campfire safety basics.

4. The wet-and-dirty zone

Every campsite needs a designated place for boots, waterproofs, wet towels and the muddy dog, and if you do not choose one, the choice gets made for you and it is the inside of the tent. A vestibule, a tarp corner or a groundsheet by the tent door all work. The rule that makes it stick: nothing wet goes through the tent door.

A line of cord between two trees or from the tent to the car takes towels and damp layers, and a length of line with clips weighs nothing and lives permanently in the camp bin.

The comfort items that earn their space

The chair is the one people underrate. A cheap folding chair with no back support quietly ends the evening early, because sitting in it is worse than lying down, and everyone drifts to their tent at eight o'clock. A chair you can sit in for three hours is the difference between a campsite and a place to sleep. The full comparison is in best camping chairs.

Light the space, not the faces

A single bright lantern in the middle of a table blinds everyone looking at it and leaves everything beyond it black. Two or three softer lights placed around the edges — one over the kitchen, one hanging at the tent door, one low near the seating — light the space properly and let your eyes stay adapted.

Hang lanterns at head height or above rather than putting them on a table; light falling downward looks natural and light shining upward does not. Everyone still needs their own headlamp for the walk to the toilets, and a small light left on at the tent door is how you find your tent among forty identical ones at midnight. The lantern options are in best camping lanterns.

The ten minutes before bed that make the morning good

Put the food away and the bin bag in the site bins. Fold the chairs or tip them forward so they do not fill with dew. Put anything that must stay dry inside or under cover, because dew is heavier than people expect and a chair left flat is a wet chair at breakfast. Close the tent properly — an open door is an invitation to every insect on the site — and leave a bottle of water and a headlamp inside the door.

Then put the fire out properly, which takes ten minutes and is the one job on this page that cannot be left until morning. Drown it, stir it, drown it again, and check the ashes are cool to the touch.