I am a bit late with posting but life has been really really busy. This is our Camp Kindling review!
I would definitely recommend Camp Kindling to everyone. It happens once a year in summer. It was a great experience, and something really different. In fact I cannot think of anything that it quite compares to. I will say it was not cheap, to me it was comparable to going away on a budget holiday once you costed it all up.
Ok so firstly, it is located in Seven Oaks, in a Forest! It takes place over a weekend, so doors open on a Friday and the majority of activities take place on the Saturday and Sunday, then people either leave on Sunday evening or Monday.
The accommodation is all camping, you do have the option to bring your own tent. Anyone that knows Elijah and I, knows that we are firmly from the city and we do not have any experience with camping. For those like us, they had pre pitched camping where you are provided with a ready set up tent, and they had a boutique camping option where the toilets and showers were nicer, there was some electricity available and also a concierge (this is what we opted for).
If you go for general camping in which you bring your own tent, then costs are included in your activities ticket. Pre pitched tents range from £145.00 and boutique camping prices were from £675.00. Also, if you have your own caravan or camper van you can rent a space form £95.00
(The video above was one of the boutique tents).
To gain entry you need a ticket, they had elementary, standard and dynamo tickets. The difference in these tickets was the activity credits. Each activity has a certain number of credits. You cannot pay for activities in cash so you have a certain amount of credits and you book the activities beforehand. The elementary tickets gave 45 credits, the standard tickets gave 90 credits and the dynamo tickets gave unlimited credits. I opted for dynamo tickets as Elijah and I wanted to try everything. For kids the tickets ranged between £75.00 to £345.00 and the adults it ranged from £225.00 to £495.00 This is dependant on what you booked.
There was a huge range of activities, they included, quad biking, tightrope walking, astronomy, ziplining, wall climbing, mountain boarding, skate boarding, raft building, mini golf, archery. There was so may that I cannot possibly list them all, see this link for a full list https://campkindling.co.uk/activities/ .
As well as all the fantastic activities, the staff at the camp try to create a really good atmosphere as soon as you get there. They had four teams that families could sign up to. Over the weekend there are different competitions, the points given to the winner go towards the team points. Each team had a song and there was merchandise available to be purchased which helped you rep your team. All this, helped create a fun competitive environment. There was a big score board in the arena area of the camp so you could keep track of the score.
The activities are booked in before you arrive, they go live on the website, you get an email when they do and you can plan your weekend. Whilst you are there the activities happen from 8am to about 5pm and you can structure your day however you like. In the evening there were parties and concerts so there is always something to do.
This is what Elijah's Sunday looked like:
As fantastic as it was there were a few issues, the showers were very sporadic in how they worked, this was in the boutique area, I am unsure if it was any better in the general area. When we got there the electricity in our tent was not working, they did rectify it before the end of the day, however, we did have to chase this up.
You can bring food and I would encourage you to, particularly snacks. There are some cooking facilities and places to heat water. If you buy food, they had a lot of stalls set up so there was variety, but these are like stalls that would be at festivals and so were quite costly.
Overall, I think it was a really good experience, it gave Elijah and I the chance to spend some really good quality time together, and it gave him the opportunity to try so many different things in that weekend. We have plans to go again and I think everyone should try it at least once.
Comments