Good Lightweight and big tents

[freddyt234]

I need to find a tent to fit atleast 5 people, that I can bring to Glastonbury...take on an aeroplane to Sardinia the week after to camp on the beach and then that I can split up the parts between a few people so we can take it cycling across Belgium and Holland...

Anyone know any good ones...or where I could get something this specific?

Thank you!

oh and it can't be tooooo pricey

[mrs_b_with_an_e]

lightweight, not too pricey, you could get a few of these between you to house all of you and your gear easily

[HurrahBrother]

That is a tall order to meet. Part of the problem being that such a variety of environments involved, no single tent is suited to all of them.

If your looking to split it up, I'm not aware of such a tent being affordable. Yes there are multi roomed palaces and some reasonable ones can be found at a reasonable price but none can be broken up into smaller usable sections (well, not without a knife, sewing and gaffa tape!).

Surely better to start with separate components and combine them?

Splitting up the tents could be done with one of these.

http://www.decathlon.co.uk/EN/seconds-base-35307101/

Or a gazeebo to provide a communal area with smaller tents pitched close into it.

Something that becomes easy air luggage is tricky. The cycling bit makes it double tricky.

For cycling, you will tend to look for something normally considered not strong enough or roomy enough for festival camping. Certainly the broad disk of a folded up Pop-up tent would be impractical to pack on a bike. 1 and 2 man tunnel tents seem to be the order of the day as they can pack into small cylinders that can be strapped to the bike frame. An example would be this sort of tent:

http://www.millets.co.uk/camping/tents/1-2...uct/094592.html

The problem is at barely 3 foot high, its easy to stumble over/trod on by people who are in a 'tiered and emotional state' (that will be everyone at the festival at some point then!). And I have seen the wreckage of many of those sort of tents at festivals in the past.

For 'suitable for a festival' tents on the other hand, can be too big a pack size for strapping on a bike.

It is a tricky one that I am not sure can be entirely solved with out a compromise somewhere, one you and your friends will have to make.

[Funkfarley]

lightweight, not too pricey, you could get a few of these between you to house all of you and your gear easily

[incident]

Depends on what you mean by "lightweight", "big" and "not too pricey", but I doubt there's anything out there that ticks all the boxes to be honest. Those 3 phrases tend to be contradictory when it comes to tents..

Personally I'd suggest getting a few bog standard 3 man tents.. 3 of them should give you plenty of space for 5 people and it should be possible to come in at under two hundred quid, weighing less than 10kg total.

Any "single big tent" option is likely to both weigh and cost more, and will be more difficult to break down for transport purposes.

Edited March 17, 2009 by incident

[.jay.]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/8-Man-3-1-Section-Al...bayphotohosting

[incident]

Having just looked at a few models, my best suggestion would be 3 x Vango Alpha 300.

40 quid a throw, so comes in at a total of £120 and a shade over 10kg.

Between 5 of you that'd work out at about 2kg each so should be manageable when cycling.

[Funkfarley]

Having just looked at a few models, my best suggestion would be 3 x Vango Alpha 300.

40 quid a throw, so comes in at a total of £120 and a shade over 10kg.

Between 5 of you that'd work out at about 2kg each so should be manageable when cycling.