Camp Easy with the AppStore this Summer
You can get an App for literally everything, and depending on who you are, you either regarded that sentence with the same interest you’d reserve for being reminded that water is wet, or you’re disgusted at this article’s shocking, hyperbolic inability to accurately speak the truth; or come up with interesting metaphors.
The Appstore and You
Even the most technologically-inert are slowly coming to terms with the fact that the modern world is a blurred haze of colourful i-acronyms that do astonishing, witchcraft-esque tricks that purportedly make your life easier. From providing you with the ability to identify and instantly purchase a song from just a small clip-recording, to the means to actually create a song with digital instruments and send it to all your friends. From the weird to the wonderful, to the slightly discerning to the genuinely useful, the iOS Appstore is full to bursting with a vibrant, impossibly wide range of applications.
With the app market bursting at the digital seams, could there even be something out there for the camping and caravan enthusiast? Whilst some feel the contradictive idea of technology intruding on a great outdoors escapade is blasphemous, now really is the best time to embrace the Year of the App no matter who you are.
As such, here is a host of camping-related applications that augment your experience and help make your time away a seamless, fun-filled adventure, as opposed to the wallowing journey through the many avenues of misery that some perceive the camping scene to be!
Finding Your Way
First of all, the Appstore can help you find the perfect site for you, and then get there:
The range of beautiful campsites situated throughout the UK can often be difficult to locate. Deciphering the best site and the route is the kind of thing that requires hours spent peering over maps and murmuring in an attempt to disguise what seems like a downward spiral of confusion you may never escape.
The AA Camping and Caravanning Guide app is a varied and useful little number that includes over 850 recommended and inspected campsites, with a link through to Google Maps, and the ability to search your location for points of interest; it’s certainly one of the best.
That said, the TomTom satnav integration, and the accessible, clean user-interface of Campsites and Caravan Parks makes this site locator for us!
Plan the Journey
Next on the hit list; the agonizing four hour journey to your excruciatingly carefully selected campsite. How can an app in any way improve this? Well Motorway Services UK allows you to pinpoint all the stops along your route, and even foresee, like the Mystic Meg of the M40, which shops and restaurants are available at each.
Speaking of foresight, no longer do you have to rely on the pot-shot, information-less traffic updates of the radio, as with Live Traffic Info by the Highways Agency themselves, you can check the steady flow of traffic along the roads you’ve planned to take; meaning less mind-numbing, stand-still boredom, and more hot-tailing it to your holiday.
Setting Up
When you finally arrive, the laborious task of setting up and levelling the caravan often involves running back and forth, in and out of the van to check the level; making tiny adjustments each time. Not only is this a raucous of inconvenience, it’s also pretty time consuming.
The Stanley Spirit Level app is, surprisingly, a brilliantly accurate spirit level, and comes with an audio bleep, allowing you to stay rooted to the spot as you adjust the level, waiting for the bleep to give you the OK. Clever eh?
Television Tension
Our last two apps are some of the most ingenious. Setting up your TV aerial for those late night, post- barbeque movies is always a hit and miss exercise, one that usually results in someone stood, in a position even Twister wouldn’t expect of you, arms flailing, desperately trying to attach the wire-aerial in what appears to be the only position where the picture is anything other than a relentless wail of white noise.
Not anymore though as the Dishpointer Augmented Reality app actually physically shows you the location of the satellites that broadcast the TV. Point the iPhone skywards and no matter what is in the way, the satellite you’re aiming for will be highlighted in its exact position, giving you some direction when you’re tuning the television!
Barbeque Time
Last but not least, to complete your comprehensive camping application pack, the all-important iBBQ. As, with a host of recipes, local butcher locations and a weather forecast, you can make sure the sun’s shining before you start, as everybody loves a barbeque in the great outdoors.
With all these superlative ways, iOS and the Appstore can help make your camping trip easy and more enjoyable, so now is the perfect time to get on board, join the revolution, and bring app-based technology to the great outdoors.
This article was written by Rob Vicars on behalf of Peak Outdoors. If you’re venturing out into the world of camping and caravanning this summer, Peak Outdoors have a comprehensive range of camping equipment to get you ready to go, today.