In the last post , I talked about how we're hoping our wee 'uns will sleep better on their ready beds. Well they weren't the only ones who didn't have the best sleeping arrangements. We borrowed some standard issue airbeds like the one pictured. They are cheap and well kind of comfy at the start of the night but, lets face it, you wake up every morning with your bum on the floor if not all of you on the floor. On top of this the ones we have were kind of old and so they were just a little bit lumpy and bumpy, and we had our 1 year old in with us too.

The other issue with these airbeds is that they are heavy and take a long time to inflate. So, as we don't have teenagers to delegate this tedious task to while they listen to their iPods, we were left doing it while the kids ran amok. Oh and one more thing, they're not very warm either, it seems all the cold from the ground seeps up through them and slowly envelopes you in the night so you wake up shivering at ridiculous o'clock in the morning. As you can tell our experience was not good.

So anyway we've been investigating a better alternative and we looked at the more expensive and thicker airbeds, but they looked like they would have similar disadvantages. Camp beds get good reviews but they look a bit precarious and you're left on your tod, no snuggling up to keep warm on a cold August night.

In the end we've plumped for self inflating mats, as far as I can tell these are foam filled mats which are thinner than an airbed but warmer and more comforatable. They also avoid that "out on the open sea" feeling you have when manouvering about on a standard airbed. Well I guess we well find out as we're about to order 2 fat airics, these get the best reviews and are the thickest (and so we hope the comfiest) we could find. We'll let you know how well they cope with the task at hand.