Making the most of your car

CAR AS TARDIS

Fit Thule's EasyBase (£139.95) over your tow ball and choose from a wide range of practical products including a rack that can hold up to four bicycles using Thule's BackPac (£149.95). Alternatively the rugged BackUp Box (£199.95) offers a huge 420 litres of extra storage space in which to stash all your camping clobber.

If you want a bag which can carry large amounts of camping paraphernalia but can be folded up and slipped on to your car's keyring when not in use, then check out the award-winning 25-litre Ultra-Sil Shopping Bag (from £9.99).

BEST TENTS FOR CARS

Camping Magazine recently gave its prestigious Tent of the Year award to the £309.99 Outwell Fantasy Explorer. Young ones will love the two adult/two-child tent because it features a private Kid's Room with a child-size door. On the outside, a game wall is also included so you can shoot hoops or turn it into a volleyball or tennis net.

Those of you wanting to avoid actually putting up a tent should consider the Vango Dart DS 200 pop-up (£49), set-up in under a minute.

Maggiolina offers a wide selection of tents that can be fixed to your car's roof. A roof tent can be opened in seconds and even those for the smallest cars offer a cosy two-bed tent to sleep in. Prices start from £1,620.

ELECTRIC CAR ACCESSORIES

Why waste space with a selection of books or magazines when a single e-reader can do the job? The Amazon Kindle (£210 approx.) is a possible solution, offering over 540,000 books to choose from.

And if you haven't had enough of the web by this point, you have to consider the iPad + 3G (£529 for the 16 gig version). With this you can browse all your favourite sites before entertaining the kids by flinging it into the nearest lake.

BEST SAT NAV AND BEYOND

Campers who want sat navs to offer more than mere road route-finding should consider a portable navigation device like the excellent Garmin nuvi 550 (from £188) and its optional Ordinance Survey maps. Alternatively the Road Angel Adventurer 7000 (from £193) comes with OS maps of Britain's National Parks as standard. These operate just like a regular sat nav when mounted in your car but, because they are rugged and waterproof, they can also be used for navigating while hiking.

BE ALARMED

Security can sadly be a concern when out camping, and not just at Glastonbury festival. Sleeptight has developed a range of proximity alarms to help deter the potential thief.

If you fancy dropping in to a nearby beach or restaurant and leaving your tent, place Sleeptight's alarm box in your tent and take the system's pager with you. If someone approaches the tent while you're gone, your pager will let you know.

For those with roof tents or motorhomes, Sleeptight's fully-fledged systems (from £299) can detect anyone approaching at predetermined range of up to 100 inches and will automatically flick on security lights and then an alarm to wake you up.