Always bring a pair of tights with you when you go camping, it means you can easily filter water before boiling and sterilise before drinking!

A few tips for happy campers! • If you’ve never pitched a tent, it’s worth practicing before you go away. Go down to your local park, or have a play around in your garden. It’s much better than being stuck pitching your tent in the dark on a windy evening • Things get lost in a messy tent. When you set up camp, try and make sure all essential equipment – such as torches and matches for the stove – have a designated place. • Keep your tent clean and dry by leaving all outdoor clothes including wet shoes in the porch area. • A good sleeping bag will keep you warm but it won't warm you up so make sure your kids don't go to bed cold. Sleeping on an air-filled mattress with an extra blanket or sheepskin underneath will help prevent heat loss. • There's more to campsite cooking than baked beans! One pot wonders, locally sourced ingredients and a few choice store cupboard items brought from home will make outdoor dining a delight. • Make the most of being outdoors and keep your little Ray Mears-es entertained by exploring the area and learning some outdoor skills such as shelter building. • If sleeping on the hard ground isn’t your cup of tea then ensure you take an inflatable mattress with you, it couldmake all the difference the next morning!

In the second episode of Fresh Air TV, Jodie Kidd goes camping in the New Forest, a location that attracts 15million visitors each year and is known as one of Britain’s Treasures. Jodie explores the surrounding woodland and catches up with some fellow campers on how you really can create a home from home under canvas.

So if you’re planning to get outside this summer and try a spot of camping, then check out some of our top tips below to ensure you have all you need for your holiday.

Top tips

• If you’ve never pitched a tent, it’s worth practicing before you go away. Go down to your local park, or have a play around in your garden. It’s much better than being stuck pitching your tent in the dark on a windy evening

• Things get lost in a messy tent. When you set up camp, try and make sure all essential equipment – such as torches and matches for the stove – have a designated place.

• Keep your tent clean and dry by leaving all outdoor clothes including wet shoes in the porch area.

• A good sleeping bag will keep you warm but it won't warm you up so make sure your kids don't go to bed cold. Sleeping on an air-filled mattress with an extra blanket or sheepskin underneath will help prevent heat loss.

• There's more to campsite cooking than baked beans! One pot wonders, locally sourced ingredients and a few choice store cupboard items brought from home will make outdoor dining a delight.

• Make the most of being outdoors and keep your little Ray Mears-es entertained by exploring the area and learning some outdoor skills such as shelter building.

• If sleeping on the hard ground isn’t your cup of tea then ensure you take an inflatable mattress with you, it couldmake all the difference the next morning!

Ordnance Survey expert Matt Wills provided us with his top navigation tips which we think are well worth a read before you hit the hill!:

1. Always pre plan your route and leave a route card of where you plan to go with a friend / owner of your B&B – and make sure they know when you get back so the emergency services and mountain rescue are not called out unnecessarily.

2. Don’t confuse ambition and ability when out in the hills. Know your own limitations and stick to them.

3. If you are unsure of where you are on a particular footpath or track – you can select two features in the landscape that you can see that line up with one another and where you are. Draw a line on your map through these features and where the line crosses the path is where you are.

4. When you walk on a bearing errors are likely to creep into the direction you are walking – to counteract this break your route down into small easy to navigate sections, using obvious features from the map that are visible on the ground such as walls, rivers and trig points

5. Being able to identify natural features in the landscape as well as man made ones to navigate by is essential, an easy one to practice is to look at the lie of the land in relation to the contours on the map and try and line the two up.

6. The straightest route between where you are and where you want to be may not be the easiest, quickest or safest. Examine the map when planning your route to understand the type of terrain that you will be covering – is it mountainous? Are there any Rivers to cross? Is the terrain boggy?

7. To work out roughly how long a walk will take you can follow Naismith’s rule. The rule works on the premise of the average person walking 5km per hour on the flat and then adding 10 minutes for every 100m of ascent climbed.

8. Be prepared when you go out – food, drink, compass, torch, mobile phone, warm clothing and a torch are some of the essentials you should always carry with you as well as your OS maps.