My friendship group and I love camping, we go to a very relaxed site (ok, a field off a chicken farm) every year and the back-to-basics atmosphere is just what you need to take a break from all the screens and hassle of the modern world.

I can easily go without the warm showers, chilled beers and box set binges, but our budget campsite has one major drawback: two incredibly grotty toilets for the entire site that are regularly blocked, made almost exclusively out of MDF, spiders and disease. Thankfully this year is going to be different: with the addition of a caravan to our little tent town, we can finally upgrade to a Porta Potti (shotgun not emptying it!)

The Porta Potti 565 from Thetford was our first experience with a portable loo and we were impressed with the compact and classic toilet design, which is more like the shape you would normally find at home. Perfect if you are looking to use it for camping, on the boat or even as a substitute during home renovations, the 565 comes in a clean white design with a manual piston pump or with an electric pump. All the controls can be covered when not in use, this includes the piston pump, water fill cap and water level indicator. For handy storage there is an integrated toilet roll holder and the new and improved carry handle on the water tank makes it more comfortable to set up and empty.

The toilet sits at a comfortable height of 443mm and a large bowl makes it feel as close to a standard toilet experience as possible (a sentence I didn’t expect to write today…) We were expecting bad smells and unpleasant emptying, but it was surprisingly odour free with the use of the right Toilet Additives. It is easy to empty with a press of the button, but when it was full it was quite heavy to move so a trolley might be handy for longer distances. After using this once it would be difficult to go back to those nasty stink boxes on site. It’s not the cheapest with the Potti and the added purchase of Toilet Additives, but get everyone who wants to use it to chip in and it’s a great investment! RRP £169.99

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4.8 out of 5

Pros

Compact

Easy to use

Comfortable height

Toilet roll storage

Straight forward to empty and clean

Electric or piston pump