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

My favourite camping experience was when I stayed in a yurt in November with my dog, trying to escape fireworks. It was so lovely being so close to nature, in a fabulous yurt away from the hellish noises that scared my furry best friend. Was one of the most tranquil, relaxing and memorable weeks of my life.

When I was about 8 we went camping in the New Forest. I woke up early one morning and decided it would be a good idea to go into the sleeping bag headfirst. A bit of an adventure. All when and good until I fell back to sleep again, forgot completely about my good idea and then was fighting to get out of the sleeping bag when I woke up. A very scarey adventure!

About 5 years ago, I became obsessed with the fact that I'd never been to a music festival, so I decided that it would be a cracking idea to drive many miles to a great big one, with our little tent, which we'd bought for this purpose (we had a much bigger tent, but figured it would be too much hassle to mess about with that). My other half had developed whooping cough, which I thought you only got when you were little, and I had cracked a rib, having been poked in the bosom by a handlebar during a particularly bad fall on a bmx track the weekend before the festival (I really should know better) We were in so much pain, but the kids were so excited. In our agony, it took us about 5 hours to pitch our tiny tent, and being novices on the festival scene, we didn;t account for the fact that somebody would pitch a tent so close to the doorway or ours that we thought we were on holiday with them. Anyway, I was in so much pain that when somebody brushed past me, i burst into tears and was told to "get over myself" and to the noise of the constant coughing, which I have to admit, sounded very much like a dog barking, somebody kept shouting "Brenda, Brenda is that you? I would recognise that cough anywhere." to which the very husky but still very cross response eventually came, "No it isn't ******* Brenda" which was not really appropriate on a family campsite, so we eventually cut our losses and left. We did enjoy the festival though, and it was a big adventure. I'm not sure I'd do it again though, although I'm sorry for the swearing, and I hope Brenda and her gang had a lovely time.

As a child, whilst on our annual six week camping holiday (where my mum always insisted on the same campsite in Cornwall right next to the lighthouse) We encountered one of the worst storms ever. However this storm started after me and my sisters had gone to sleep. We awoke in the morning lying in the glorious sunshine surrounded by debris, having slept through it, We were minus our big orange family tent which had blown over the cliff. We had such fun trying to retrieve all our worldly goods!.....or the other campsite where she would pitch the tent on a hill and we would wake up outside the tent where we had all slowly worked our way out of the tent on the slippery ground sheet. My mum was pretty rubbish at camping....but it was good fun!

My most memorable camping experience was the last time I went camping with my parents as a teenager. We stopped for a few nights at Chamonix, camping under the shadow of Mont Blanc . The first day was glorious - clear blue skies, alpine hills like something out of Sound of Music, until night fell and bouoht with it two days of thunderstorms! We shivered away in waterlogged tents watching the brilliant lightening strikes split the sky, with the great mountain framed vivdly against the night with each flash. It was beautiful but scary!