INFORMATION ABOUT CARAVANS CAMPING & MOTORHOMES - TIPS HINTS & ADVICE

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Choosing a tent

Making the right choice of tent can be important to successful and enjoyable camping, however tents like all gear is very much a personal thing so make up your own mind as to what you require from a tent. Here are a few tips from our own experience that might help when making your choice:

There are many types of tent design but they all tend to be derivatives of four basic principles, tunnels, domes, geodesic and ridge all have there advantages and disadvantages.

Type of Tent	Advantages	Disadvantages
Hooped Tunnel	Large living area for the weight, designs can easily accommodate large vestibules for storage and cooking in bad weather. Tend to be pitched outer first with the tent hung inside, so very easy to put up.	Not quite as strong as the Geodesic designs, but many are used for 4 season camping and depending on the fabrics/poles used and the guying system, can still be very strong and stable in high winds.
Dome	Can give you a large living area with plenty of height with reasonable vestibules for storage. Tend to be pitched outer first with the tent hung inside, so very easy to put up.	Tend not to be as strong and stable in high winds due to their higher profile, but good for valley camping.
Geodesic	Very strong shape that can spill the wind and if designed well with good materials and poles can be virtually bomb proof!	Inner pitching first can mean that the inner can get wet when pitching in heavy rain. Due to the geodesic shape the vestibules tend to be small and so some designs can lack storage areas.
Ridge	Strong shape that can spill the wind and with 'A' frame rather than single pole and good guying can withstand most that is thrown at it.	Due to the ridge design the living area isn't as big as tunnels or geodesics and the vestibules tend to be small and so lack storage areas.

When making your choice consider carefully where you will be cycletouring, do you need a tent designed for high mountain situations? We currently use a Hilleberg Stalon GT for cycletouring which weighs the same as our Terra Nova Quasar, we prefer the Stalon over the Quasar as it gives us far more room and in cycletouring we are mainly using lowland campsites. Certainly if we were to go mountaineering in the Scottish hills we would without hesitation take the Quasar as it has a smaller footprint and we would happily sacrifice the room for a stronger tent that we know from experience can withstand Scottish mountain weather.
Consider the size of the awning is there enough storage space for all your panniers and gear, you don't want to have to leave them on your bikes.
Look at the collapsed pole size when selecting your tent, as smaller sized poles are easier to pack and carry on a bike.
Most modern tents use synthetic materials which are extremely waterproof, this is great to keep out the rain but it also means that any perspiration, steam from the stoves and water vapour from the ground in a large vestibule will condensate on the outer. To minimize this tent designers put in vents, therefore make sure that these are well positioned, strong and capable of being closed off in bad weather.
Make sure that it has a good full sized outer fly sheet, some cheaper tents have little or no fly sheet that protects the doors of the inner tent in bad weather.
If you are on a tight budget go for the best quality that you can afford, a good tent makes the difference when it comes to an enjoyable camping experience. There are so many tents out on there on the market these days and it's difficult to compare them as manufacturers use different names for the fabrics and materials that they use. The old saying "You get what you pay for" is to a certain extent true with tents, as those priced at the lower end achieve this price through a compromise in the quality of construction and in the materials used. I have seen some cheap tents where guying points have ripped out through poor stitching, buckles breaking through the use of cheap moldings and poles breaking in strong winds due to the use of weaker glass fibre poles which don't flex as well as good quality aluminium poles.
When making your choice look for a manufacturer that gives a life time or at least a 5 year guarantee for their products.

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