The Kindred camped four times a year, in tune with the seasons. They gathered at Crystal Palace and at Bradenham Common in High Wycombe. They met in Matlock in Derbyshire and Missenden in Shropshire, always in search of new camping grounds. Dancers entertain a gathering of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift
At Whitsun, the great meeting of all the Kindred took place. Named the Al-Thing, it was a group camp of 60 to 70 men and women and their children in over a hundred tents, arranged in a semi-circle on a large flat common bordered by a wood. At the Al-Thing, there were wrestling contests and the performance of plays and mummeries. Here the Kindred held their council meetings at which disputes were aired and resolutions made. Whole sheep were roasted and giant loaves baked with a symbolic K marked in the dough. A performance of The Great Taboo at the Al-Thing of 1924
Activity was divided between art and war, between the writing of songs and poetry, the playing of music, embroidery of banners, the fashioning of puppets and masks, and trials to harden the spirit and stiffen the sinews, such as night hikes and fleet-foot races. Some of the Kindred survived solely on rations prepared the previous winter to test out their preparedness for a state of emergency. Their formidable company of archers honed their skills.
From Matthew De Abaitua’s essay on the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift to be published in The Idler in 2010.
“Jerkin and Hood. Tents in a half circle. Pitched at sundown, gone in the morning. Outlaws…?”
The hooded figures marched up the Long Man of Wilmington. The men wore knee-length braided shorts, brown leather belts, jerkins and pointed green cowls in imitation of the forest outlaws of Robin and his Merry Men. The women wore Arabian keffiyeh-styled headdresses to protect against the sun and one-piece knee-length dresses tied with leather-belts. On the flap of their gray Bergan rucksacks, a mark was painted – a large letter K beside the curling smoke of a campfire and a single green fir tree. The men and women greeted one another with the Native American salute of the open palm, right hand raised high. All the hikers bore rough ash hiking staves, which pushed against the earth as they ascended the Long Man, singing a song of their own devising: “The Kindred is Coming.”
Long Man of Wilmington from the Kinlog of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift
Carved into the north-facing scarp slope of Windover Hill, the Long Man stands two hundred feet tall. In each hand he clutches what appear to be two staves. The provenance of the Long Man of Wilmington is uncertain: we cannot be sure if it is a sixteenth century tribute or symbol of pagan antiquity. Today, the outline is defined with concrete, and the Long Man is visible to the traffic passing on the A27. But in the year of the hike, August 1929, the figure outlined in the long grass was a mystical watermark on the hillside.
Hawk, gleemaster of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift
Windover Hill and the surrounding area are rich with remnants from England’s ancient past: Neolithic flint mines, Bronze age burial barrows and a Roman terrace way. The hikers marched up the steep hill in their variant of the classical wedge formation and, at the heart of the Long Man, performed a brief ritual of dedication. Their voices echoed around the distinctive acoustics of the concave slope. Thus they reached back, far, far back into the void-faced hood of prehistory. Mankind’s evolution has been a progressive degeneration, with alienation at every stage. First Man was alienated from oneness with his god, then cast out from the harmony of Nature. The process of separation is remorseless, each severance placing another partition between Man and the Golden Age. He lost his link to his ancestors. He grew apart from others, from his community and fellow man, until even his wife and his own children were alien to him. Each cut was made by the instruments of knowledge and industry, two scissor blades cutting in unison. The final divorce, the ultimate decree nisi, was issued by Freud: man was alienated from his own self. The hikers reached through the void and into the hood searching for the rough hand of Neolithic man, their ancient guide to living in harmony with the subtle, undulating forms of the Downs.
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Ritual completed, the hikers continued up over the featureless head of the Long Man to the brow of the hill. There, they looked down over the South Downs, a cumuliform landscape of “whale-backed” hills and verdant valleys founded on a bank of chalk. Cloud shadows passed over ploughed wheatfields. In the distance, coastal bays and the glittering English Channel. On the coast the seven peaks of the chalk cliffs rise and fall. Known as the Seven Sisters, each Sister is the measure of a terrifying eternity: trillions of coccolithophores – nanoplankton – lived and died here in a deep warm sea, leaving behind their scales of calcium carbonate to build up over time into the gleaming white cliffs. On the beach, a stunning everywhere of light as the high sun was reflected by these geological mausoleums.
From a leaflet distributed by the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift
The Sussex downs, their name derived from the Saxon word ‘dun’, meaning hill, were one of many sites in the English landscape stalked by these strange hikers. Their rituals summoned the ancient British pagan tradition, from back before the Romans, back to a Neolithic Albion of menhir, tor and cromlech, Silbury Hill and the White Horse of Ulmington. The ancient sites throbbed with dormant meaning. For a joke – in the Freudian sense that there is no such thing as a joke – one of their men stripped naked and squatted at the root of the enormous phallus of the Cerne Giant, as if drawing the sexual potency into himself. Such ancestor worship sounds preposterous now: in the twenty-first century, Stonehenge is a tourist attraction at which the passing traffic on the A303 slows to gawp, before speeding on to holidays in Dorset. But in 1929, the remains of English prehistory retained sufficient mystical charge to inspire this select group of hikers and campers as they sought to change the direction of Western civilisation. They were the most intriguing and inspiring of English reform movements, an elite cell a few hundred strong, already nine years into their existence come the occasion of the dedication to the Long Man of Wilmington: they were the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.
This is the opening of a long essay on the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift to be published by The Idler in 2010.
A campfire should be at the centre of any camp yet few sites allow you to set one. Sussex is well-served for campfires, with Spring Barn Farm and Blackberry Wood being the closest places to allow them.
For our annual “iPodival”, a gathering of a dozen adults and an ever-increasing haul of children, we returned to Dernwood Farm in Heathfield. After wheelbarrowing our gear through the woods, we pitched at the entrance to a glade. The first task was to prepare the fire site.
I dug out a rectangle of turf about one and half feet by two feet and set it aside. Then I foraged stones to act as a fireproof ring. A hanging bag of water was on hand in case things went awry. Modern tents made of polyester are exceptionally flammable. I once saw a tent catch fire and become engulfed in seconds. I set the fire a good distance from any tent in case it threw out flaming sparks.
The scouts can light a fire in under two minutes without the use of a match. You can even generate a spark with a twisted coil of wire wool and the contacts on a mobile phone battery. I prefer the trusty Swan Vestas dropped into a pile of tinder in the centre of a pyramid of thin dry kindling. The pyramid or tipi fire provides a directional heat that is good for cooking, although it is liable to tip over when you add new fuel. So dig the vertical lengths of kindling into the ground.
Dared one another to get close to the thrill of iron and flame
My fussing over this small fire proved unbearable to the experienced firebugs in our party. Tim had a pair of sharp axes he had picked up at the Woodfair last autumn. He quickly trimmed logs down to the desired length and set them burning. Then he assembled a tripod from which he suspended a kettle on chain links. My modest conflagration leapt and bounded. I counseled Tim to keep it small, as a small fire will give out a good amount of steady heat. The buzz of masculine interest attracted the boys,
who gawped and dared one another to get close to the thrill of iron and flame.
Fire is a technology, a tool to be used with care and precision
Over at the next encampment, a circle of drunk men whooped as their large fire burnt hot and brief, gobbling up plywood and paper, all spectacle and no practicality.
Fire is a technology, a tool to be used with care and precision. Over the weekend, we cooked on it, warmed ourselves around it, and burnt our leftover food upon it. I took care to extinguish it at night, and when I awoke, Tim coaxed the ashes back to life.
A camping trip should have a purpose, writes Thomas H Holding in the Campers Handbook of 1908. That aim could be archeology, boating, geology, angling, whatever. For our “iPodival” the aim was the sharing of new music, in which each camper took their turn showcasing a playlist of their favourite songs on the stereo. But over the course of the weekend, the music waned and it became apparent that the object of our camping trip had become the fire, with man and boy alike slipping into the rhythms of the element.
When the weekend was over, the fire was put out, the ashes dispersed in the woods, the turf replaced and patted down. The camping ethos of Leave No Trace was there in Holding’s century-old Handbook and it is essential at a site like Dernwood Farm, where you must wheelbarrow your rubbish back to the entrance for recycling. Next time I will bring nothing that cannot be disposed of by fire.
Every camper longs to discover a secret site, an isolated glade they can call their very own. This is one of contradictions in the soul of camping, the desire for isolation pulls against the pleasure of community. For some, the perfect site is an empty field. For others, it is a field full of new friends.
The secret is out concerning cool camping sites in Sussex; this summer, you will struggle to get a weekend pitch at Blackberry Wood, Waspbourne Manor Farm, Hidden Spring or Heaven Farm. Still, necessity is the mother of invention. Following a tip-off we turned up a secret site all of our own, a secret I shall now share with you.
Plaw Hatch Farm in Sharpthorne follows the principles of biodynamic farming as inspired by Rudolf Steiner. The mixed farm strives to be a closed system, aiming to use only its own seeds, fertilisation and animal feed. Camping is a recent addition to the system and one the farm is tentatively exploring: a composting toilet has been installed; a nearby spring tapped; a woodpile of firewood stacked in the centre of the field; a hacksaw left for the campers to share.
We camped on the upper reclaim field of Plaw Hatch Farm amongst meadow grass looking down into the valley where the milking herd graze. There is no shower block or reception, just a small caravan, an unfinished tree house, and a pair of bell tents. Lewes is leading the revival of the bell tent, although I cleave to the opinion of T.H. Holding, author of the Camper’s Handbook of 1908, who wrote “Bar its frightful weight and bulk, a second-hand War Bell Tent would do, though, without exception, this type of tent is the most dismal inside that I know.”
There was just us, one other family and the cows. The life of the herd makes for a good soap opera, with its bovine comings and goings, its chewing gossip, and its drama – when a bull bellows from a neighbouring field, all the cows stand to attention as if commanded by their sexual sergeant major.
In mid-afternoon, we walked amongst the herd as it was ushered off for milking, the farmer whistling the cows on, swishing their backsides with a reed when the mischievous beasts dwelt on the delicious herbs tufted in the verges.
The results are there on the shelves of the farm shop; thick delicious yoghurt, pints of raw creamy milk, and Gouda and cheddar cheeses. The biodynamic movement comes out of the ideological ferment of the inter-war years, arising from a series of lectures delivered by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. Biodynamic agriculture is precursor to organic farming, with a little magic sprinkled in there too, as befitting Steiner’s anthroposophy. Star charts are consulted when sowing and planting, and preparations made from cow horn play a homeopathic role in the composting.
Such spiritualism gives the farm a hushed, reverent air. Needless to say, my children and I launched ourselves upon that peace and quiet like a collection of power tools. By the end of the weekend, roles had reversed and we were the soap opera for the cows. Sometimes you want a secret site not to hide from other people, but to spare them.
I spent yesterday in the British Library with The Campers’ Handbook by THH Holding, published in 1908. A sepia photograph shows us the author at camp; he is a chunky and kindly chap, grey at the temples and with an amenable unkempt moustache, relaxing in a straw boater and collarless white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His pipe is tucked in the crook of his palm. I have much to write about Holding’s classic handbook but for now I will share only this alluring account of family camping:
“I have just visited an ideal family camp. It is on an island in a river. There was the eating tent, the sleeping tent, the servant’s tent, the cooking tent for wet weather, and the overboat tent. Here the family and their servants were spending a ‘savage’ holiday.”
And his observation of the enthusiasm Edwardian women brought to the pursuit.
“Perhaps I may be permitted to say here that I have seen them [women] excel men, too, in smartness and cleverness. How quickly they pick up the making and mounting of a tent and its appliances, the cooking and the tidying up, and how they take to the bathing. How the beautiful spirit of brightness and the merry ring of their laughter within hearing of the men is an added pleasure to all.”
We went for a stroll around a camping fair held in a field at the back of Middle Farm, near Lewes. Dozens of tents were pitched for the inspection of prospective buyers, from the Vango Dart 200 – a pop-up festival tent – to the enormous Wolf Lake 7, a grand’s worth of polycotton aircraft hanger.
Pitched on long grass, the zipped-in groundsheets were swampy underfoot, and the bigger the tent, the looser and sloppier they felt. I don’t like tents that pretend to be houses. They remind me of vegetarian sausages. Why pretend to be something you are not?
Thirty-three years after Bob Gillis revolutionised the industry by inventing the first geodesic backpacking tent, the Oval Intention, this camping fair seemed intent on taking a big step backward, being more in the spirit of those despised tan-and-orange monsters of Vintage Camping. The Oval Intention used tension to provide integrity to its structure, following the geodesic dome popularised by Buckminster Fuller. Here the design of large tunnel tents like the Outwell Florida 6 owed more to Wisteria Lane – superfluous weight added to make a tent that looks like a suburban terrace, pitched with a rotary clothes drier in the yard to add to the air of domesticity.
I have a strong aversion to tents with windows. A tent is not a house. You should not be sitting in your tent peering out at your neighbours through a thick sheet of plastic. I don’t want a tent with a wardrobe either. Or a carpet. Outwell’s wall-to-wall carpet comes in a box illustrated with a picture of a happy couple laughing sensuously. Because that’s how in-tent wall-to-wall carpet makes you feel. This is campsite as temporary suburb.
We wandered into the camping shop. We are in the market for a table but none of the tables on show survived five minutes with the boy toddler. We are also in the market for less stuff. That’s what camping teaches you – that you don’t need all that stuff. After an hour, I bought a five quid foot pump, ignoring the motorised ones. Let my children inflate an airbed. Let them know what that feels like.
The highlight of the fair was Outwell’s Indian Lake tent, a teepee with a porch, erected around a thick central pole. I would have liked to have a crack at pitching it, to test the promise of it being “easy to pitch and pack”. Like the little conical hat atop the Vaude Badawi II, the peak is meant to aid ventilation, although the design of the Indian Lake felt like a pretentious hotch-potch where the Vaude Badawi II is a more elegant evocation of the nomad. Of the others on show, we like the Vango Tigris 800 and 600 tunnels, cheap and very easy to pitch for a family tent, although the extension looked like a right dog’s dinner slung onto the back. How long before some enterprising firm decides to cash-in on the British habit of suburbanising everything they touch by manufacturing a conservatory that attaches to the side of your tent?
It’s the beginning of Bank Holiday weekend and the traffic into Dorset crawls past accident after accident. On the verge and in the central reservation, the beautiful dandy faces of cars faces have been bashed ugly, as if set upon by jealous brutes. The unlucky participants stand around dazed, compressing bumps and scrapes with wet clothes and staring at the ongoing traffic with disbelief – how can you lot continue blithely on your journeys when this terrible thing has just happened? But it’s nothing, we reply. The damage is purely cosmetic.
On the return journey we pull up behind something far more serious and recent. Just over there, a driver – thoughtfully, mercifully – holds up a blanket behind which a man is dying. A motorcycle lies burnt out. The police move with a terrible and disturbing urgency. Witnesses leave their cars and walk through the traffic. I turn the music down and wait to be told what to do.
I have never driven on a Bank Holiday before. The anger involved is new to me. Anger is the energy men use to force their way through the crowd and up onto the promised freedom of a holiday. Even packing feels angry, stuffing and stuffing the gear into the back of the car and dismissing the bags deemed to be inessential. Later, we hear about an incident at a neighbouring site when a man driving a caravan completely loses himself to anger, screaming and swearing and demanding everyone got out of his effing way. Statistics tells us that Bank Holidays are always rife with accidents but I wonder if the anger is worse this year. Recession anger. Expenses anger. Hapless-sap-in-a-corrupt-sham-of-a-democracy anger. Or perhaps that man was angry because he was driving a caravan in Bank Holiday traffic, which is like trying to put out a fire with petrol.
Cath and I look at one another and wonder if we have made a terrible mistake
The angry head stays with me when it comes to pitching the tent. Anger makes it feel like I am staking and marking out territory. The nearby ball games make me seethe, none more so that when a tennis ball bounces off my head and onto the Trangia so that the boiling water lists. Now a football strikes the barbecue sending hot coals onto the dry grass. The fire attracts the baby’s interest. I burn my fingers flicking the embers away from the galloping approach of my concerned infants. The transition from angry driving into the community spirit of camping is almost too much for me, a gear change from fifth to first and the revs are roaring. Cath and I look at one another and wonder if we have made a terrible mistake.
We didn’t. The rest of the week camping was glorious. Our eldest thrived in the responsibility and freedom of running errands, making friends, building dens. The brains of the two infants lit up with being outdoors all day. Sure, at one point, in the precious hour between finally getting them all to sleep and taking to bed ourselves, Cath asked me if there would come a point in the holiday when we got to enjoy ourselves, but that was just the black parental humour talking.
Time passes, we adjust to tent life. The angry head becomes outdoor head, the expansive inner clarity that comes with spending all day on the land and under the sky. And that’s why we camp: for the perspective.
The BBC weather forecast is like my mother: it fears the worst. Absolutely pissing down, say the BBC
Some of the most beautiful weekends of my life were – as far as the BBC was concerned – big black clouds. I wonder if their weather predictions intentionally err on the side of caution to leave them less open to blame if their prediction of a blazing barbecue Sunday goes wrong. Or perhaps the BBC wants to discourage their audience from leaving the house.
I am sure the fault lies in my perception of the situation. I am sure the BBC is blameless and perfect, and not the meteorological Daily Mail they appear to be.
Weather should be clear-headed, but news is clouding weather’s judgement
Residents of the Highland community of Carrbridge say that they live in one of the driest areas of Scotland. The residents claim that the BBC weather website forecasts a wet day and then it turns out that there are only a small number of isolated showers – and sometimes no rain at all. This tallies with my own experience – an hour of rain in an otherwise fine day billed in advance by the BBC as a weeping black cloud.
News and weather are always bundled together, like husband and wife. News accentuates the negative to create drama. Weather should be clear-headed, but news is clouding weather’s judgement. Perhaps it is time they ended their co-dependent relationship and then weather might be able to think more clearly about what is really happening outside its window.
Friday afternoon. Invariably the BBC five-day weather forecast has been chipping away at morale all week, only to change its tune just as Saturday is upon us, innocently maintaining that it had predicted bright with sunny spells all along. But it is too late to pack and so we must spend the weekend in the house, staring at the sunshine through hot windows and dreaming of green fields.
Follow the track down into a clearing in the wood and there is a stage, a barbecue and the makings of a bonfire. On that stage, a young Amy Winehouse-lookalike in leopard-print dress, high black belt and fake tattoos is working through the hits with more precision than Amy herself can muster, these days. Amy Winehouse tribute performance at Lovewood There is not much of a crowd. The sun is overhead and the punters are still pitching their tents at the other end of the field, where the pylons overhead make my daughter’s hair crackle.
This is the first Lovewood festival, a collaboration between the Love Is All You Need charity and Little Dernwood Farm. The plan is to raise money for the charity and its work in South Africa, including an education centre in Mdumbi, caring for children orphaned by HIV and AIDS in communities where 170 adults die every week.
A handmade, friends-of-friends type of event, Lovewood is not so much a festival as an expression of goodwill and support for this charity.
I don’t dance for the same reason I don’t walk around in a pair of speedos – out of consideration for others
Little Dernwood can be found along the narrow country lanes around East Hoathly, and the campsite has a growing reputation for providing an experience closer to wild camping than the manicured order of the nearby Caravan Club site. There is no shower block. There is a composting toilet somewhere but I can’t find it. As it is late Spring, the bluebells turn down their bonnets in the dappled glade. On stage, a collection of children called Jazz Code come on. The adults hide behind the barbecue stall, smoking the cigarettes they promised their children they had quit.
A silver heart in the trees of Lovewood
A Streets-style trio called Twisted Link perform an impressive collection of raps over beats taken from the 8-bit and 16-bit videogames of yesteryear. I look around for their parents. No sign. Perhaps the boyfriend of the daughter of someone. Their set coaxes a few more bodies into the big empty rectangle at the front of the stage. Now the Mum and Dad dancing begins in earnest. Mum grooving her baby’s arms in time to the beat, Dad gallumphing around in front of the stage with his son on his shoulders. The baby is in a papousse, and its arms and legs flail around as Mum dances.
Dirty Ugly Punk Monkeys play a set that turns a variety of beloved classic songs into shouty musical mince
Needless to say, I don’t dance. Not anymore. I can’t lose myself in the beat. These days, my mind wanders off and starts thinking about bills and art and things and before I know it, I am just standing in the middle of the dancefloor as if startled from a dream. Nor do I encourage my children to dance. I don’t dance for the same reason I don’t walk around in a pair of speedos – out of consideration for others. Emo offspring skulk around, discover their parents having a cheeky fag in the woods, and roll kohl-rimmed eyes. I’m with them.
The land cools quickly. The pylons with their rigging are ship masts sailing off into the sunset. My brood returns to its tent. It takes longer than ever to load the children into bed. Elsewhere, the party is just starting. Soon the bonfire will be lit, and Dirty Ugly Punk Monkeys will play a set that turns a variety of beloved classic songs into shouty musical mince. And somewhere in the woods, a grey-haired old badger will put its paws over its ears and suffer for a good cause.
I woke up this morning on the floor of a Hackney flat overlooking London Fields. As I lay there, mind churning to restart, I considered the question of where to pitch a tent. Keswick, 1968
On level ground free of stones or roots, with soil that is not so boggy as to indicate risk of flooding. Neither on top of a hill nor directly at the bottom and certainly not half-way up. Do not pitch directly under large leafy trees, as a steady run-off of rainfall and greenery can damage the outer tent, but stay proximate to any shade they may offer. Take advantage of natural cover from the wind such as hedgerows. So far, so obvious.
The sensible pitcher, having taken account of nature, then considers human needs. Close to water and ablutions but not too close. Plan out in your mind where you are going to cook and whether the smoke will blow into your tent or that of your neighbour’s. Leave a sufficient distance between yourself and other tents to perpetuate the illusion of privacy. When I prepare to pitch, my senses buzz with the awareness of territory already claimed; the temporary ownership rights of others, the fine line between joining a group and infringing upon it.
We pitch our tents far apart so that our hearts may stay closer together
Back in the Hackney flat, I rose and dressed, and took the liberty of making myself a cup of tea. The previous evening I had broken the cardinal rule of pitching – I had set my bed in the dark. The arrangement of sofa cushions, bust sleeping bag and empty cans of lager did not represent best practise. My host remained in bed. On the balcony I drank a brew and watched the school run. Three children in yellow safety helmets rode bikes of descending size behind their mother. A brother and sister hurried to make the bell but still did not let go of one another’s hands.
In my mind, I addressed these youngsters with the self-satisfaction of experience:
Don’t pitch your tent within sight of the pyramid stage, I thought. You’ll regret it.
Don’t pitch your tent next to the bonfire, unless you like to fall asleep to the sound of bongos and conspiracy theories concerning contrails.
Don’t pitch your tent right next door to your friends.
There is a Bedouin proverb: we pitch our tents far apart so that our hearts may stay closer together. Far apart so that the sound of their snoring will not disturb. Far apart so that the first thing you see in the morning is not their battered hungover face as it emerges from the tent to verify suspicions about the weather. And, most crucially, far apart so that we are spared the hell of one another domestic routines. No-one should have to listen to me harrying the children into line. No-one should have to listen to Cath and I debate breakfast, the constant exchange of banal information required to keep the family on target. Let us get our shit together before we are expected to be social. Let me at least wash my face.
We are both currently off the treadmill of regular paid employment, as is the fashion this season
I often cite this Bedouin proverb when friends suggest renting a cottage together. Regardless of everyone’s good intentions, such holidays have an undertone of passive aggressive negotiation about differing domestic standards. Families can’t share kitchens. Camping is better – let us come together around the ancient brotherhood of a campfire, rather than around a dining table, with its baggage of bourgeois food performance anxiety and over-familiar topics of conversation.
Nine o’clock came and went. My host remained in bed. We are both currently off the treadmill of regular paid employment, as is the fashion this season. Still, I had an appointment to keep with a job I once had. A job that I meet now and again for coffee: the final negotiations in the break-up of a long-term relationship. I called up the stairs to thank my host for his hospitality but he was asleep. So I packed up the sleeping bag, restored the sofa cushions to their place, and crushed up the empty cans and placed them in the recycling. How you strike camp is as important as how you pitch it. One simple rule applies. Leave No Trace. I opened the windows to air the room and thus I left it just as I had found it.
You should not be sitting in your tent peering out at your neighbours through a thick sheet of plastic. I don’t want a tent with a wardrobe either. Or a carpet. Outwell’s wall-to-wall carpet comes in a box illustrated with a picture of a happy couple laughing sensuously. Because that’s how in-tent wall-to-wall carpet makes you feel. This is campsite as temporary suburb.
The highlight of the fair was Outwell’s Indian Lake tent, a teepee with a porch, erected around a thick central pole. I would have liked to have a crack at pitching it, to test the promise of it being “easy to pitch and pack”. Like the little conical hat atop the Vaude Badawi II, the peak is meant to aid ventilation, although the design of the Indian Lake felt like a pretentious hotch-potch where the Vaude Badawi II is a more elegant evocation of the nomad. Of the others on show, we like the Vango Tigris 800 and 600 tunnels, cheap and very easy to pitch for a family tent, although the extension looked like a right dog’s dinner slung onto the back. How long before some enterprising firm decides to cash-in on the British habit of suburbanising everything they touch by manufacturing a conservatory that attaches to the side of your tent?
