Sleeping system

This is how the sleep system looks when packed up, using mine as an example.

The bag itself is actually left over from our unfortunate swag experiment. Everything is loosely rolled up and stuffed into the bag — quick, simple, and very fast to pack away.

The self-inflating mattress could fit in the bag with some convincing, but then you’d struggle to close the zipper every time. Instead, I now use the two mattresses as filler during packing. They sit around the bags and stop everything from moving around while driving.

This is how it looks unpacked.

Yes, the self-inflating mattress isn’t actually inflated — I just laid everything out quickly to take the photo. And no, I normally don’t sleep on top of a picnic table either.

Working from the bottom: first the self-inflating mattress, then a closed-cell foam mat wrapped in a fleece sleeping bag liner. The combination of the two mats makes small bumps disappear, even for a side sleeper, and it’s surprisingly warm even when camping on cold rocks.

On top of that goes a synthetic summer sleeping bag (with a small pillow) and a down hiking quilt inside it.

All three layers together are incredibly warm, but the nice thing is that you can open one, two, or all three depending on the conditions.

Jasper’s version is slightly different — he uses a kids’ sleeping bag instead of the quilt, as he tends to sleep a bit colder than I do.