Having been away for our first trip of the year we've identified a few things we want to change and one of them might be the tent itself. Firstly, a bit of background the weather was bitterly cold and windy, it rained and as we left, the car failed to start due to a flat battery. So it wasn't our best trip by any means. Secondly, we went away as part of a larger group one of which has recently swapped from a tent to a caravan (as I mentioned in my last post). Thirdly, I arrived first with our littlest (she's 3 bless her and useless with a mallet) so putting the tent up took twice as long as usual, an hour or so for the tent and another hour or so to get the beds, kitchen and so on all sorted.
So the main issues we had were:
- The bitterly cold nights.
- The time and effort to set up and pack away camp.
- A flat battery from charging up various gadgets the night before.
- Having neighbours who were warm and snug in their caravan.
We're now looking at the options to sort these out and it comes down to 2 main thrusts in my opinion.
- Refine our current camping equipment and style.
- Look into a different style of camping.
Option 3. would be to stop camping altogether, but there are too many things we enjoy about it for that option to be considered.
So option 1 means buying more stuff, for example an EHU kit. If we had electric hook up then we could have a heater and take chargers which would get around a couple of the issues but not all of them.
Option 2 is more radical and the one that leads to selling the tent. To be clear a caravan is not an option for lots of reasons which I'll try to cover in a future post. what we're considering is a trailer tent. What we want from our camping home is a warm, comfortable, spacious place that feels like our home from home, but doesn't take a long time to set up and pack away. A trailer tent seems like it could tick all of these boxes but we'll need to investigate further.
Obviously as the season progresses the bitterly cold nights will become less of an issue and an EHU will be useful even if we do switch to a trailer tent so we'll probably get one anyway. All of this points to a trailer tent purchase not being made anytime soon, but expect more ramblings on them from me from time to time.
the way to go..
I am a big fan of trailer-tents, having had a Concraft Texan for years when we had young children. They are easier to store and tow than caravans, and more important, feel like a tent.
Having shared that weekend, we have also been looking for solutions to the snags with what was still a great outing. So far we have been pursuing option 1 - bigger tent; better airbeds; warmer sleeping bags; tent carpet(a great asset}.
The downside of all these improvements is more stuff to carry (we don't have a trailer) and more time and effort putting things up and down and getting them ready, even though we had plenty of help.
Trailer tents are expensive, but there are second-hand bargains around. I know, because I have been browsing. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way I can justify getting one at our age, but if we had more years of camping ahead of us, this is definitely the way I would choose to go.