Perhaps you’re here because you can’t fly off to your sunny summer holiday and you’re beginning to think people might be right about this camping thing, at least until the plague is well and truly gone. But you’ve never camped before; you don’t even know where to begin. Never fear, I’m here to help! Camping for beginners, camping 101, the basics of camping, I’ve got whatever you need and what you need first is how to buy a tent.
Now, for me, a tent was an excellent investment. I look at the price of the tent and the price of a campsite and the price of a hotel or guesthouse nearby and I notice that my tent is now paying for itself. But that might not be the case for you, especially if you need a big tent.
So, until you’re sure this is for you, can you borrow a tent? Do you have family or friends who can lend you a tent for a weekend? Can you find a campsite that will include tent hire? Or even try camping in a pre-built glamping tent or yurt – it’s very expensive and it doesn’t really compare to sleeping in a “real” tent but it might give you an idea of whether being on a campsite with a piece of fabric between you and the wilds is something that works for you.
Buying a tent
Tents these days are generally of fairly lightweight but strong waterproof fabric. I want to say nylon but I’m not sure of that these days. Anyway, it’s not the heavy cotton canvas of yesteryear and an adult can fairly easily carry a 6-man tent alone, or even a bigger one. When I say “carry”, by the way, I mean as in from the car to the pitch. Don’t take that sort of thing backpacking. Special backpacking tents exist. They’re very small and very lightweight and very expensive. I’m not the best person to talk you through buying a backpacking tent.
There are a couple of things to consider when investing in your own tent. Do you want enough space to stand upright in? If you’re going to spend a lot of time in the tent, that can make a difference but it also makes the tent less stable in bad weather and sometimes more expensive. Do you want the sleeping compartments to be blacked-out? Consider how early the sun is up in the summer and how much more noticeable that is in a tent than in a solid building. Do you want one large sleeping compartment or several smaller ones? And of course, how big do you want the tent?
Unless you’re specifically after a lightweight backpacking tent, I’d generally go for “a little bigger than I actually need”. My one-man is wonderful for bringing on a plane but for a long weekend in Devon, I go for my two-man with the big porch every time. If you’ve got two adults and two kids, a four-man will serve your purpose but I’d choose a six-man and so on. It gives you just a bit more room for luggage and for sprawling and for not getting under each other’s feet.
As for number of bedroom compartments, I’d try to go for as many as possible. Six in a row is ideal for a group of Guides on camp but if you’re camping as a family, do you and your kids really want to be stuck in the same small room? Tents don’t give a whole lot of privacy, especially when it comes to noise, but separate compartments are nice. Big compartments are better for warmth – when we’re camping in winter, we cram as many people as possible into one compartment so they’re all snuggled up together and everyone’s body heat is helping warm the tent space, but if you’re a beginner, you don’t want to start with camping in winter and you should be fine in smaller, less cramped bedrooms in summer.
The next question is shape. Well, mostly it’s not a question. Shape doesn’t really matter. Domes are a little easier to pitch and to fold away and they give you a little more height but there’s nothing wrong with a tunnel either. They’re a little more aerodynamic. I have no experience with bells/teepees, the ones with a central pole, but a friend of mine has one and he seems to enjoy it, or at least his kids do. If you have a shape preference, excellent. If you don’t, then excellent also.
If you want easy but surprisingly heavy, you can now get tents that use thick inflatable chambers instead of poles. I think you’ll need an electric pump rather than the old foot pump you take to the beach with your lilo. They’re probably pretty bombproof but I can’t help imagining the state of the tent if one of them gets a puncture. But I believe they are easier to pitch than a traditional tent, so that route might be the one for you.
Ideally, get yourself to your local outdoors store and have a look at the tents they have pitched in the shop. It’ll help you figure out what you really like in a tent. A big space everyone can sit and play and eat in is great. Bear in mind you won’t be cooking in your tent. No, really. A barbecue in a tent is a guaranteed way to kill everyone with carbon monoxide poisoning – and opening the doors while you do it isn’t enough. A camping stove in a tent is a good way to poison everyone while also risking burning or melting the tent on top of you. As an absolute last resort, you may be able to use a gas stove in the porch but I’d wait until I was an hour from starving to death before I risked that. If the weather isn’t good enough to cook outside, your campsite might have a special building for cooking and eating in or you could go down the road to the nearest pub or cafe. Save lives, eat out.
What it really comes down to is the price. Good news: sometimes you’ll find tents reduced because they’re last season’s colour. Colour is personal preference, by the way. Unless you need a camouflage-colour mid-green, go for what you like or what’s available. Yellow tents will transmute dull grey morning light to tropical sunlight, right up until you unzip the walls to reality. Just something to bear in mind.
As I was saying, price. You can go from the sort of pop-up festival tent for mere pennies up to a canvas castle for your entire life’s savings. For reference, I’ve had a look at a couple of outdoors shops and prices are somewhere in the range of £50 – £200 for a 2/3 man, £200 – £500 for a 4/6 man and £400+ for anything bigger, depending on where you’re shopping.
(Umm…. my two-man tunnel was from Millets in their closing down sale and cost the princely sum of £40, which is an incredibly good deal. Admittedly, this tent has had more maintenance than any tent I’ve ever seen but still, £8.40 on Mylar tape for a broken window and £13.10 on a pole repair kit still doesn’t add up to much. Tent repair post coming soon. My one-man yellow tent would have been about £120, I think.)
A few don’ts. I wouldn’t bother with a pop-up festival tent. They’re just not sturdy enough for anything other than a single use while you’re drunk out of your mind and coated in mud. Save your money and the environment and get a better tent that you’ll get lots of use out of. Don’t pick a single skin tent – your outer and inner work together to keep the rain and bugs out. Don’t pick a tent without at least a small porch. I’ve opened my tent in pouring rain straight into my bedding before and I’m here to tell you that a porch is wonderful for keeping the inside of your tent dry, not to mention functioning as storage space and somewhere to leave your wet shoes.
If I was buying myself a new tent today, I think I’d be tempted by the Berghaus Cheviot 2 (£140), the Eurohike Tamar 2 (£50) or the Berghaus Cairngorm 2 (£175). I don’t think any of them are as good as my £40 Tay Deluxe but I got a great bargain there. If I was after something bigger, I might fancy the Vango Icarus 600 (£330), the Eurohike Rydal 500 (£180) or the Eurohike Sendero 6 (£129) . I’m a big fan of the likes of Eurohike and Vango. If you’re after something a bit more expensive, I hear lots of good things about Terra Nova, especially their ultralightweight Laser backpacking tents. But for “normal people”, anything you can buy in Go Outdoors, Blacks, Millets, Cotswold or even Argos, that’ll be more than good enough for the sort of use you and I are likely to want from them.
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Next time
This is going to be an ongoing series this summer so over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be covering how to pitch your tent, how to repair your tent, camp cooking and anything else I can think of. If you have any requests, leave a comment!