Our story

‘‘Camping for us is a way of life – creating time to slow down, living at natures pace, enjoying family and friends, the excitement, the freedom, seeing the stars on a clear night, feeling the warmth of the fire on your toes, waking up in the morning to hear the birds singing or people laughing, and seeing those scrunchy, sleepy faces.’’

Hello, I’m Tess!

I absolutely LOVE camping! I have camped all my life, and as a child I was taken year in, year out, rain or shine. I was lucky enough to grow up in Wales where I could explore the mountains, lakes, beaches, streams and find so many perfect camping spots. I camped in our garden, then started going off camping at festivals with friends. After university I travelled to Australia and ended up driving around the whole of Australia in a van, camping and working along the way.

I came back to the UK and met Karn (who I had actually been at primary school with and hadn’t seen for 20 years!). We fell in love and for our first holiday together he whisked me off to Cornwall camping. That began our camping life together and was the inspiration for a book ‘The Happy Campers’ which I wrote with my sister-in-law in 2006.

We now have three lovely children, and we love to camp as much as possible. We know how beneficial it is for our children and us as a family to have that bonding time together, nestled in nature and be able to explore this beautiful planet we live on. 

We have always tried to camp in a way that has the least amount of impact on our environment. We bought our bell tent 15 years ago and its still going strong! We get a lot of our camping gear second hand, from car boots and ebay! We always leave our camping spots as we found them, we recycle at camp, and we try and use products which have a low environmental impact.

We've seen the explosion in camping since Covid and feel the camping industry could be so much more sustainable. We had a look around for products and realised that there wasn't a specific shop for this and so decided to start 'The Sustainable Camping Company' – to help and inspire people to camp in a more ethical way. Our plan is to start small, source some great products to share with you, find out what you want and hopefully encourage the camping industry to look at being more sustainable. 

We hope that you will come along on our journey! 

Much love