Our first overnight trip of the year consisted of a night spent in the local wooded area of Jegersberg. We were able to camp here as while it is in close proximity to Kristiansand, all people in Norway are permitted the right to camp as they please as long as they do not violate the principals of respect for the land, no disruption (including not camping within 150m of a residential building or on agricultural land) and not staying in the same location for more than two nights. This is known as ‘Allemannsrett’ natively. It is a right which requires respect as failure to maintain its core principals could mean that the rights to freedom are revoked and access to Norway’s expanses become far more limited.

The overnighter acted as an opportunity for people who had little experience sleeping and eating in the outdoors to test their gear and ideas and also involved us organising games in groups split by our home nations. While all of my gear was tried and tested and I made my challenge to pack as efficiently as possible fitting all of my personal and group gear in my small 35 litre bag. This involved my 4-season mountain tent, 3-season sleeping bag, blow up sleeping mat, Trangia, gas canister, food, clothes, waterproof jacket, waterproof trousers, water bottle, thermos, bits and bobs such as my torch and knife, trowel and first aid kit. I was very proud of this as typically I don’t manage to fit all of my overnight gear in such a small bag. The best part being that it was all solo gear and I wasn’t relying upon anyone else for my cooking gear or a tent.

The evening was good and as a group the games we ran were generally exciting and dynamic. My group ran a game of ‘rubber chicken rounders’, a British classic however other groups were more creative and ran games many of us hadn’t heard of before. Other’s took new approaches to old, well known games in order to make the focus of the game shift more to teamwork and teambuilding. One such example is whereby the Hungarians took the game noughts and crosses and mixed it with a relay race involving additional difficulties such as having legs tied together, requiring communication to be successful.

After this we cooked a series of different meals as groups to give people some idea of what to eat when out on expeditions or simply camping and also how to cooking on camping stoves, specifically Trangia stoves. People became aware of the differences in fuel types and the advantages (low cost) and disadvantages (slow cooking, wastage and sometimes messy) of liquid fuel as opposed to gas mixes. The advantages of Trangia stoves over other types of stoves were not abundantly clear due to the nature of the environment however as a Trangia owner I can speak to the fact that they are extremely reliable and provide a lot of wind protection however they are cumberson and large compared to ‘pocket rockets’ and ‘Jetboil’ stoves.

I slept well and was warm however I discovered one issue with my tent which I had never had before, there was a huge amount of condensation build up. I put this down to the possibility of the vent being blocked somehow or perhaps the person I as sharing a tent with sweating a lot. Either way this is something I will have to monitor as I hope it is not an issue with waterproofing.