Tents and camping shelters

The tent is the most structuring item you own: it decides how well you sleep, how much space your kit takes up and, often, which sites you can reach at all. A five-berth family tent weighing 15 kg and a 1.4 kg bivouac shelter answer opposite briefs, and neither is better in the abstract.

What actually separates the models

Four criteria explain most of the difference in price and use.

• The stated capacity. It is the number of adults lying shoulder to shoulder at minimum width, with no luggage. For a holiday in one place, allowing one berth more than the number of sleepers is the most reliable rule there is.
• The season rating. A 3-season tent covers spring, summer and mild autumn. 4-season models add wind and snow resistance that a July camper has no use for.
• The waterproof rating, given as a hydrostatic head in millimetres. From 2 000 mm on the flysheet a tent handles continuous rain; below 1 500 mm it is limited to short showers.
• The structure. Fibreglass poles are cheap and heavy, aluminium is lighter and lasts longer, and air tents replace poles with inflated beams to simplify pitching.

Choosing by how you camp

For a holiday pitch, where the tent stays put for several days, headroom and floor area matter more than weight. A tunnel tent or a multi-bedroom model gives you living space you can genuinely use when it rains.

For hiking or bike touring, every hundred grams counts. You want a low packed weight, a small packed size and a tent one person can pitch alone, in the rain, without laying the inner on the wet ground.

For bivouac, discretion and speed come first: a minimal dome, a tarp or a half-open shelter, depending on the forecast and local rules.

Looking after a tent

Most tents do not die of wear; they die of being packed away damp. Always dry the flysheet before folding, even after nothing worse than dew: a few hours of trapped moisture is enough to start mildew that lifts the coating. Store the tent loosely packed, somewhere dry and out of UV light, and refresh the flysheet’s water repellency when water stops beading on the surface.