With the recession kicking in, I predict that next summer more people will go camping. In the interests of saving money I’ve had a look at some of the cheapest tents on the market.

For a ridiculous £12 (yes, £12!), you can buy a two man tent. In fact, it’s so cheap it doesn’t even have a brand name (try BizRate!). It’s not a large tent but is OK for a weekend or so. I can’t guarantee that it’ll withstand a torrential downpour or take anything stronger than the balmiest breeze, but you’ll be under cover at least! However, reading reviews on this tent is making me eat my words – ‘it withstood Reading Festival’, says one happy customer. ‘It held up under serious wind and rain’, says another happy customer. Well, if that’s the case, it may be the best £12 you’ll ever spend and it only weighs 2.3kg.

For £18 more we start to approach the Coleman realm. It’s pitched at the festival goer as it’s an easy to put up two man tent. The door can also double up as an awning, so great for cooking out of the rain. It also boasts a Weathertec™ system which means, you stay dry when you go camping. However, with a weight of 4.3kg it’s a quite heavy, large tent. The pluses are the height of the dome, the awning, the fire retardant material and that it’s just under £30. This tent also received rave reviews.

I found a huge range of tents all for £29.99 but I decided to review the Gelert Quickdraw. It’s a pop up tent, so erects in seconds, it weighs 2kg and comes in a range of cool colours, including camouflage. Reviews of this product weren’t so good. Customers complained about the zip leaking in the rain and the amount of condensation in the tent. It appears to be watertight all over but not on the inside! Friends of mine bought this tent for a father/son camping trip and complained that they woke up unable to breathe in the night as the large tent had very little natural ventilation! Maybe not such a great purchase, but the majority of people using it gave it the thumbs up.

I recently purchased two camping chairs from a supermarket chain for about £8 each. I felt rather smug as they were nicely coloured and looked a bit different to the usual camping chairs you see on campgrounds. I was a bit of a late convert to the camping chair having numbed my nether regions for years as I grimly got on with the job of cooking my dinner on the ground. Camping to me was always about minimalism and leaving no trace. However, since having a child, I have had a bit of a mental relaxation about “what camping is really about” and tried to make it more fun and easygoing for the family. I want to make my life easier as I go through the next five years with toddlers.

I now need to get a folding chair for my daughter as she keeps pinching mine whenever I get up. A quick perusal online showed me that I had been rather narrow in my search of a good camping chair as I have found that there is a whole range of different shapes and sizes out there. My chair comes with the obligatory beer can holder, but I’ve seen ones with pockets that you can slide your paper into. Or ones with a foot rest (after a hard days hike!). There are reclining chairs, multi-position chairs and even little fold up chairs for kids.

On reflection, I think just going for the basic fold-up camping chair was a good idea as I don’t want to drop my minimalistic camping habits completely. Otherwise I’ll be looking at buying other luxury items like camping toilets next.

There is a lot of kit involved in camping and it’s a pain when you forget something. So here’s a list of those camping essentials you just have to take with you.

Roll mat – this is very important as it keeps the cold away from your body, ensuring a better night’s rest. It’s also slightly cushioned, so your hips don’t feel bruised when you wake up in the morning! I like the inflatable roll mats, they offer better insulation and comfort. It can be a bit of a fight rolling it back up again in the morning. This leads me nicely onto my next camping essential.

Sleeping bag – not only essential, but an absolute necessity. A sleeping bag can mean the difference between life and death if you are in a chilly location. I remember being trapped in my lovely warm down sleeping bag for hours waiting for sleety conditions to clear up on a mountain in Argentina. If I hadn’t had it, hypothermia would have soon set in.

Tent – again, shelter is of the utmost importance in dangerous conditions. It gives you shelter and somewhere to cook, sleep, read and relax when the world is raging around you.

Stove – this gives you the means to refuel and stay warm. A hot cup of tea, or soup, is a powerful restorative and morale-booster if you are tired, cold or hungry. My trusty Trangia stove has been all over the world with me and I won’t leave home without it.

Torch – I have been racking my brain over this one – the last of the five camping essentials. It could have been camping boots or a camping lantern, but a torch is multi-purpose. It’s great if you arrive late at a campsite or need a midnight call of nature in unfamiliar terrain and don’t want to kill yourself tripping over a tree root. It’s good for reading in bed and can be used to signal for help in emergencies.

I’ve decided to go all Ray Mears on you and come up with a few alternative ways to camp. It doesn’t always have to be under canvas.

First up would be the good old snow shelter. A few million Inuits can’t be wrong when it comes to the ultimate in protection from the elements in snowy conditions. It definitely helps to have a shovel or small saw so you can cut into the snow to cut out chunks. If neither of those is to hand, then you need to rely on your hands to build up your own little ice cave. All you need is a few reindeer throws for that extra bit of home comfort.

A branch tent is another good one using Mother Nature’s camping accessories. Ideally, you need a good fir tree with large fronds to help keep out the wind and rain. The most important part is making a frame strong enough to balance all the branches on. A Toblerone shape is probably best as you will keep most of the front open so you can feel the heat from the ‘morale-boosting’ fire. Fir fronds also make a surprisingly springy mattress piled up together. Your hands should suffice for breaking off branches, but a small saw or machete would make lighter work of it all. To bring an extra special bit of comfort you could make your own camping toilet by digging a hole in the ground and covering with fir tree branches. At least it wouldn’t be too far to walk in the middle of the night!

Tarp tent – this type of shelter is adopted by the Army as they always keep a bit of tarp and hammock in their pack for impromptu sleeping. A good survivalist would find him/herself two trees several feet apart from each other. You’d also need to set up a fairly thick branch to hang the tarp over to keep the rain off. The most important thing is to make sure the trees and branches can take your weight. The last thing you need is to crash down while you’re sleeping in your hammock.

Often the best camping adventures are the ones that are most challenging. This is definitely the case for one of the most scenic I have ever stayed at. While on a trip across the Canada, my girlfriend and I tackled a number of multi-day walks in the Rocky Mountains. It was on this trip that we stayed at the Takakkaw Falls Campground in Yoho National Park.

This is no ordinary campsite. It sits at the foot of the Emerald Glacier, on Yoho River, at high altitude almost at the tree line. To get there we took a succession of buses and hitchhike rides from Lake Louise as we made our way up the winding route to this glacial campsite.

But it was well worth the effort as we were lucky enough to get a pitch at the water’s edge with outstanding views of Takakkaw Falls, which cascade 380 metres into the river coloured turquoise because of the mineral deposits of the melting glacier.

If this campground was a house it would be considered prime real estate, yet we were staying there with uninhibited views of the Alpine vista for a couple a dollars a night. It was one of those places that you could stay for forever… if it wasn’t for the cold air coming off the glacier!

The newspapers have been awash with stories, probably exaggerated, about a huge increase in the number of people taking up camping due to the current credit crunch. If these stories are to be believed, the popularity of camping is at an all time high as people tighten their belts and look for cheaper alternatives than their two-week summer sojourns to the Med.

Many high street and online stores have reported a 40% increase in the sales of tents and camping equipment, making these outfitters some of the only retailers to actually benefit from the current economic downturn.

But I wonder how many of these new tents actually got used this year as the boom in camping sales has coincided with the worst summer weather for a generation. Here in the South West, it has rained almost every day for the last few months, which is enough to dissuade even the hardiest of campers from making the long journey down. The campsites were full this year but were far from overflowing. Let’s hope all those tents do not go to waste and that they see more use under sunny skies next season.