Eat Well, Live Well - Meet the team - Mia Hartwell

My most memorable camping experience took place on 1 Oct 10, at an altitude of about 4,700m on the eve of summiting Kilimanjaro. The stars in the night sky were crystal clear, the clouds were some 2,000m below us and ahead of us was the six hour climb to the crater rim, followed by a further two hours around the crater to the true summit. We'd raised nearly GBP 5,000 for the NSPCC, and it was the weight of responsibility that kept us going all the way. Standing on the summit in the early morning sunshine was the best experience of our lives.

I went camping whilst doing my Duke of Edinburgh in the summer I left school, it was my first bit of independence and I loved it, and have loved the outdoors since. Cant wait to take my children camping!

I was a young girl and sleeping with my mom and sister in a Bedford van, my dad and brothers were in the tent. I woke up to my mom scream place down, as a cow had tried to climb in to the van as my dad had brought my mom a cup of tea and left the door open.

The most memorable camping day of our camping trip was the 24th September 2010. We found out we were expecting a baby after many years of trying. Doing the pregnancy test together in the tent was so memorable and initially there was shocked silence. After the second pregnancy test we were both cheering and other people on the campsite celebrated with us. The baby is still keeping us waiting as i am now 4 days overdue, but very soon we will have our long awaited baby...and are planning another camping trip soon!

When we were in our late teens - me, my sister Gill and friend Sally went camping in the south of France. It was our first holiday without parents and our first time camping. We were so excited - three girls off on a two-week long adventure. Sally told us assuredly that her older brother (a veteran of many rock festivals) could provide all the camping gear, so we happily took her word for it. There was a little stove and a kettle, a lantern, sleeping bags and of course a tent .. which we never bothered to do a trial run with - just loaded it into our rucksacks and off we went. We travelled by train then boat then train, and after an exhausting 14 hour journey we eventually arrived at the railway station in Marseilles. Here we were due to catch our connection to Nice, where we had booked a pitch on a campsite. It was the middle of the night and although our train was there waiting, it was empty with lights off and doors locked and the station itself was deserted. As it wasn’t due to depart for a few hours we decided to get out our sleeping bags and have a much needed kip, right there on the empty platform. It was the noise of a whistle that woke us up - to discover our train was packed to the rafters with passengers and just about to leave! I dread to think how many people had stepped over us three snoring English girls in order to board. Grabbing up our stuff we made it onboard with seconds to spare. As every seat was taken we had to travel standing up in a corridor and as the train trundled along I caught several of the chic French passengers chuckling and sending amused glances our way. ‘Rude so and-sos’ I thought, until I caught sight of the three of us in the window reflection. Smudged make-up, hair all over the place, clothes and belongings in disarray - imagine female versions of Ken Dodd, Wurzel Gummidge and Edward Scissorhands - and you get the picture. The train seemed to stop at every station and halt along the coast and the journey took forever. Never getting up any kind of speed (or so it seemed) we rattled and rumbled along getting ever more dishevelled by the minute, and we moaned and groaned when the train decided to stop at a little station a few miles from Nice and sit there for half an hour! Eventually we got moving again and on arrival at the main station at Nice central, we were soon puting our schoolgirl French into practise to ask directions to our campsite. Imagine our horror when we were told it was several miles back in the direction from which we had just come .... in fact, little more than a stone’s throw from the station where our train had sat half an hour! With no trains going back in that direction until much later in the day, no bus service and no spare funds for a taxi, we had no choice but to trek all the way back there lugging our heavy rucksucks and baking under the hot Riviera sun. Pouring with sweat, dirty, exhausted, fed up .. when we first got sight of the glistening sea it was as enticing as an an oasis in the desert, and without hesitation we all charged into the cooling water fully clothed. Unfortunately (as we were to discover later) my sister had all her money - a wad of Francs in the pocket of her shorts, which got soaked through. By the time she realised, they had dried and soliified into a lump of papier mache. We ended up in the Bank with a very disdainful clerk muttering to herself about les stupide Anglaises and trying to separate the notes from the lump with a pair of tweezers. If all this wasn’t bad enough - when we came to set up our borrowed tent, we discovered it was of early 1900s Boy Scout vintage. Khaki coloured, thick canvas, no integral groundsheet (in fact no groundsheet at all) and only one tent pole!! All we could do was tie up the end without the pole around the trunk of the tree, so what we ended up with was a sort of lopsided beige wigwam. We were surrounded by European camping veterans of many nationalities ... with state of the art luxury tents and camper vans with awnings and suchlike. We were the laughing stock of the site. It didn’t matter in the end .. because we never spent much time in it anyway. The scorching hot weather of the first day gave way to thunderstorms and torrential downpours that meant we spent most of our time huddled up under the corrugated plastic roof of the bike sheds eating cold baked beans out of the tin (as we never did figure out how to work the stove). After three days we gave up and went home! Needless to say, I have never been tempted to try the camping experience again. However, the wood fired hot tubs, feather down bedding and beautiful views of the Derbyshire countryside (courtesy of Ryvita and Secret Cloud House Holidays) might just be enough to persuade me to give it another go!