tent – The Art of Camping

Can we unpack the camping gear?

We packed away our tent and gear last August after the End of the Road festival. It seemed an appropriate point at which to end. I spoke to a hundred people in rain-soaked glade wearing the braces and hard-wearing trousers that saw me through two summers of performing at festivals.

And then the long winter set in and it’s mid-April and only now does it show signs of shifting. For first-time campers, it’s time to check out tents from Argos and their selection of camping equipment from torches to sleeping bags. A few times we’ve swung down to Argos to pick up head torches for the kids or a replacement camping kettle. Given the bad habits of the recent British climate, I’d be inclined to pack warm: that means a sleeping bag which is comfortable at temperatures below freezing, a silk sleeping bag liner, a good Thermarest sleeping mat, hat and gloves.

Last summer was pretty rotten for the camping season. It was July before the rain abated. At our annual group camp in the woods, half the people cried off at the last minute, citing gales. I am guessing that the late Spring is causing carnage with campsite bookings in the UK. Like many families at the moment, we can’t afford to fly anywhere and even paying for a ferry trip abroad is daunting. In the past, we’ve always braved the British climate with good cheer. What seems to have changed is its unremitting nature: that when cold and rain sets in, they persist without relief.

This will be the first summer for a long time that I won’t be traveling around performing at festivals, and instead I’m hoping to get the family out to somewhere wild: perhaps Calgary beach on the Isle of Mull, or the forests of the Czech Republic. But no firm plans yet. Also, I’m much fitter now than I was even last year, and can consider something more strenuous; treating myself to a solitary highland wild camp. I have another novel to complete first but at the first sign of prolonged sunshine, I know I won’t be able to stop myself from hauling the tent out again.

Our tent, the Vaude Badawi II

At campsites and festivals, we get inquiries about our tent, the Vaude Badawi II. When it appeared in the background on the BBC camping documentary Britain Goes Camping, Mumsnet lit up with curiosity.

The sand-coloured Vaude Badawi II is a pyramid rising to a ventilated apex, with three bedrooms sloping off the sides. The designer Tommi Langowski was inspired by the old pyramid tents used by expeditions. He improved this classic design by removing the central pole and replacing it with an ingenious four-legged spider pole that provides supportive ribbing for the roof. As a result, the living heart of the tent is roomy, high and uninterrupted.

[ad#Google Adsense-solid bar]

Unlike the big family tunnel tents, the bedrooms are low-ceilinged and modest which makes them much warmer if you are camping out of summer season. Sleeping in the inner tent is like being in a small two-men tent. Step out into the living area and there is plenty of well-ventilated living space. The groundsheet and fly sheet are not stitched together, leaving a gap of about two inches between the grass and the bottom of the fly sheet. As long as you peg the fly sheet so that rain runs straight off the tent and into the ground, the interior remains dry. I prefer not having an integral groundsheet: the tent is less likely to rip and the air circulates freely so that even on a scorching morning, the interior remains cool.

Vaude Badawi II at Gwalia Farm — I cannot pitch that little hat properly, but it does its job.

The Vaude Badawi II weighs just shy of twenty kilos and we use it to sleep three children and two adults. Over two years, we have taken it out about twenty-six times, to tiny campsites and festivals. The only flaw is the little rain hat that balances upon the apex of the tent, which is effective but almost impossible to pitch tidily or with any dignity.

Vaude’s website, as of 2011, lists just the Badawi and the Badawi Long as current tents, but the Badawi II is still available.

Where to pitch a tent

Many busy campsites allocate you a pitch, putting their convenience ahead of your pleasure, denying you the smug feeling of a well-chosen aspect. Resist this, and seek out your own spot. Here are some criteria collated from the works of Horace Kephart, who was concerned with wild camping, and some observations of our own from more domesticated fields.

Find level ground. Consider shade and shelter. Ideally, a spot that gets plenty of sun in the morning to dry the tent.

And pick it clear of twigs, stones and anything that might rip the groundsheet or be uncomfortable to step or sleep on. You are about to embark upon a relationship with the earth, to go cheek-to-cheek with the land, don’t let anything get in the way of that intimacy.

Don’t be tempted to pitch under a tree, lured in by the promise of shelter. When it rains, the branches concentrate the water into a steady focused drip. Leaves fall and stain the flysheet and compromise the waterproofing. If branches break off, they could damage the tent or worse. Dead trees are always unsafe and potentially lethal.

Think carefully before pitching in the the woods. “The experienced man gives woods a rather wide berth,” wrote Thomas Holding. “Woods proper are more or less damp, and the pulpy decayed vegetation bottom gives very bad holding for pegs. In the next place, the tent should get all the sunshine possible, and a wood robs it of at least half of it.”

An open spot elevated above its surroundings gives you good natural drainage. Camp well above any chance overflow from the sudden rise of a neighbouring stream, and observe previous flood marks.

A good summer pitch may be unsuitable in winter, and vice versa. On warm days, the tent should be in a position to enjoy the breeze. But the same spot in the Winter could expose the camp to the prevailing wind.

Where is your campfire going? Can you leave plenty of room between the fire and the tent? And is the prevailing wind going to blow smoke toward the tent or away?

If camping in the wild, your first consideration is a supply of fresh water. Your second is good firewood. Look for rock faces to camp near. Pitch your tent a safe distance from the cliff in case of falling rocks, but set your campfire near to the cliff it so that the heat reflects back off the stone and into camp.

If pitching in the rain, confine the children to the car and give them more biscuits than they require.

At the entrance of the tent, fold back a yard or so of groundsheet, so that anyone entering from the wet will drip onto grass, and not your groundsheet. In Three Men and A Boat, Jerome K Jerome describes pitching a tent in the rain thusly: “It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings around your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring down steadily all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it all.”

The most difficult aspect of pitching a tent in the rain is keeping your temper.

Camping Gear – Tent and the basics

Camping shops sell a wide range of camping gear and camping accessories, only a few of which are essential. If you pack camping carpet you need to ask yourself if you have the right hobby. We pack as light as possible because it makes pitching and striking from campgrounds easier and quicker: maximum utility, minimum weight.

Tent
Before rushing out to buy the biggest tent in the shop, bear in mind that some of the more interesting campsites are quite small and will refuse entry or charge more for an enormo-tent. At festivals, a big tent can be a massive problem, as it will be far too heavy to lug from the car park and you won’t necessarily have a large enough pitch for it. Nearly all the family tents on sale play to the delusion that you are buying a house, in which square footage is important and weight irrelevant. You are not buying a house. You are camping because you want to be outdoors, not because you want to cover the outdoors in a giant bag. A well-designed family tent should have headroom in the living area, but low ceilings in the bedrooms to trap heat.

Tarp
A sheet of tarpaulin strung from a tree means you can cook in drizzly weather, and offers breezy shade when the sun is out.

Waterproofs
All-in-one suits and wellies for toddlers, all-in-one suits for babies, and waterproof jackets for everyone else. If you don’t want to wear waterproof trousers, then change into shorts. Walking boots or wellies are essential, especially at festivals, where the mud can be biblical.

Picnic rug
If you don’t want to bother with a table and chairs, take a plastic-backed picnic rug.

Table and chairs
We used to camp without a table and chairs, using a rug instead. After five years of eating off the ground, Math’s longing for a chair was so intense I was concerned that he would resort to theft. I found flat pieces of reinforced plastic that slid unobtrusively into my rucksack and could be folded into small stools, about six inches high, but the spectacle of him squatting on them only added to Math’s indignity and sense of failure as a man. Once we switched to camping with a car, he bought himself the biggest chair in the shop.

Cooking Matches
Long matches to light fires, stoves and barbecues. A cigarette lighter is not always suitable.

Ordnance Survey map of the area
Math is a great believer in the importance of orientating ourselves upon this earth.

Clothes
Don’t forget to take a big warm jumper; whatever the season, it gets cold at night. At bedtime, stuff the jumper into a pillowcase and rest your head upon it.
Continue reading Camping Gear – Tent and the basics

Tent reviews

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. middle-farm-tents1

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. outwell-wall-to-wall-carpet 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.

indian-lake-tent 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?

Where To Pitch A Tent

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.

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.