One of my favourite things in the summer is heading out to the coast to go camping and soaking up the glorious sunshine; one of my least favourite things is waking up with the sunrise at 5am and by 8am feeling like I am trying to sleep in a sauna. The Mackenzie 4 BlackOut tent from Coleman features their BlackOut Bedroom design; this clever bit of tech blocks out the daylight, keeping the sleeping area cool in the daytime, up to 5°C cooler in fact.

The Spruce Falls is a classic four-man tent from Coleman with a few useful modern twists. It features the practical symmetrical design with a bedroom at either end and a living space in the middle. This division provides some much-needed privacy for families with older children or a group of mates.

This year we decided to upgrade our usual camping trip from a long weekend to a full 10 days of outdoor living. For this we wanted a very specific tent: something you can stand up in, as this makes getting changed and general moving about so much easier. We also wanted plenty of space in the sleeping area, as trying to share an airbed with my husband is similar to trying to take a nap on a bouncy castle at a 6-year old’s birthday party, so this year we want enough space for two single airbeds.

As my friends and I get older, our annual camping trip has progressed from 2 man tents, ground mats and a tin of beans to a miniature village with all the latest camping gadgets and creature comforts. The Coleman FastPitch Air Valdes 4 Person Tent is just the thing to knock my friends’ pop-up tents out of the park; the Valdes offers idiot-proof erection due to its inflatable pole system, with a high pressure valve for quick inflation and deflation, meaning  the tent can easily be put up by one person.

When it comes to airbeds, mine seem to get bigger and more luxurious every year; I used to sleep on a thin foam ground mat with no trouble. But as time has gone by, getting comfortable has become more difficult and waking up has transformed into a symphony of moans and groans as I try to clamber out of the tent (I can only assume that the ground is getting lumpier these days).

The majority of my camping holiday will always be spent sitting in a camping chair; whether it be on the beach or by the campfire, it will be one of the most used pieces of camping equipment for the duration of the holiday.

There is a running joke within our group of friends that one of our mates couldn’t put a tent up even if his life depended on it. I kid you not, this year all he had to do was peg down the outer layer (someone else had already done the rest) and instead he opted for sleeping in his van all weekend, as the prospect of reaching for the mallet was just too much.

As the evenings draw in and we spend more and more of our waking hours in the dark, I found myself digging through the kitchen draw for my torch only to discover that the batteries I left in it last year had died.

The Coleman Twist+ 300 LED Lantern is a multipurpose camping lantern with a light output of 300 lumens when used on its high setting and 50 lumens when used on low. It has a runtime of 5 hours on high capacity, with a whopping 300 hours - that’s 12.5 days of constant use – on its lower setting

The Fyrestorm Stove by Coleman is an ultra-compact backpacking stove designed to withstand the kind of nasty weather we are oh so used to in the UK.