Had a feew in my time but nothing so bad. The usual not finding the sleeping bag and spending a night in a foiul blanket (bad plan) and tents ratteling in the wind but some bike tourers in South Australia seem to have had a little surprise

They have ridden from Clare to Burra, Jamestown, Orroroo and Peterborough, but the storm hit when they arrived in Melrose.

Neighbouring farms were hit by a tornado, which toppled over the high-voltage electricity pylons.

The same system blew the cyclists’ tents across a park and even into a tree.

“I’ve been on a number of Bike SA rides and this would have to be the most extreme weather conditions we’ve had,” cyclist Karen Richardson said.

“Nonstop rain, hail and wind — everything you can think of, we’ve had it.”

The cyclists have swelled the population of Melrose, but found dry places to sleep.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-30/mid-north-cyclists-endure-wild-ride/7892586
but as usual

A Queensland cyclist joked he would like to continue riding in the wind and rain as he had seen it all before.

yes there is always that bloke

This was the strathpuffer circa 2007 wasn’t it ?

Or the raasay rumble. Vivid memories of the ginger legends Glasgow uni sport science gazebo trying to become one with the firth of raasay

Never been so glad to have anchored my tent to a tree and the car 🙂

We went camping to Cornwall in 2008/9 (can’t remember exactly).

We’d tried it out for a couple of years with a small Blacks tent with the basics to see if we enjoyed it before splashing out on a large Vango tent & some creature comforts…..

It started raining before the first cup of tea had been quaffed & carried on raining for virtually the next fortnight….although we gave up after a week, packed up in a 3hr dry window on the Sunday morning & headed home.
It’s not happened again, but god, it was horrible!!

Camping at the Twentyfour12 a few years ago was pretty harrowing for some, when it rained continuously & they were minutes away from evacuating the site as the river was threatening to burst it’s banks…
I had to get up at 3 in the morning in the pissing down rain as the tent canopy made a bid for freedom & we woke in the morning to find many other campers had put their tents in hollows that had filled with water forcing them to move in the middle of the night.
I don’t think I’ve seen so many wrecked gazebo’s in one field!!

One of the first Reading festivals I went to, it was dry for the 2 weeks before then pissed down, with obvious results… Except not obvious to the 50000 or so people that’d never camped before. We’d seen the forecast so we found a wee hilly spot near a gravel road, wasn’t too bad. The guys who camped in the dried out streambed near us, not so much…

Back in the early ’90s the climbing club I was a member of headed off from Walsall up to Snowdonia for a weekend of trad bashing. We arrived at the campsite near Capel Curig late in the evening, it was dark and pissing with rain. Got the club’s two trusty Vango Force 10s out and started to pitch them, quickly discovering that we didn’t have any pegs with us for either of them. Combination of random bits of stick, the van, it’s jack, rocks and the odd bit of our climbing racks saw them up in some semblance of tent shape before we retired to the pub.
When we got back one had already collapsed & we had a rubbish night wedged into the other before a trip to buy pegs on the Saturday morning. Climbing was rubbish due to the weather too…

Are they still in the tent though?

My best one was waking up in the main field at Great Langdale NT campsite after a heavy evening at the ODG with about three inches of water lapping through the tent . Other campers had noticed the impending doom but I just merrily slept on.

My mate poo’d his tent on the last night of Endorset in Dorset festival a few years ago.
I think he woke about midday the next day to an empty field.

Many years ago, decided to take my sister’s £50 Argos tent rather than the old force 10 mountain tent (I presume because it was bigger). During the night at styhead tarn a pole snapped, retreated in the dark to lower ground, the only bit of ground where the tent would stay up in the wind was behind a wall in a dip. Woke up to the sound of running water right near our tent.

Raasay Rumble! My tent looked 10 years older after that and we were sheltering behind mate’s vans!! My wife was scared to get up for a pee in case I blew away in the tent.

Amateurs. Travelling to fontainbleau in November to do some bouldering we planned to kip overnight in an aire. ‘Wheres the tent?’ ‘I thought you brought it’

Folded a bouldering mat over myself. It was not warm.

Camping at Glentress a few years ago. Sat in my tent eating a bacon butty. Wind gets up. Tent roof gets gradually lower. Eventually touches my head and keeps going. Eventually something gives and the alloy poles fold over flattening the tent. The wind dies down and disappears altogether. Stopped the night in a hotel, made for an expensive trip!

On ML Summer assessment, the week before Christmas, woke up at 3am to a bang, flap, swear. The assessors Quasar was flattened. Woke up at 7am to find assessor wrapped in torn flysheet, dog on his feet, shivering and trying to light a wet rolly….

Another ML assessment, my tent was only one of 10 that survived the night up at Sprinkling Tarn. Go Macpac Tunnel tents. 😆

Pitched up on shore of Loch Shiel – clambering into bed and noticed the tent was full of ticks. Hundreds of em. 😯 Cue *hours* of clearing em out as best we could. Mrs_oab did not sleep a wink…

Probably about 20 years ago this one but in the RAF Cadets at school, we went off on night exercise.

The army cadets got ponchos and bivi tarps, we got a load of old A-frame tents, the traditional style thing with that stupid vertical pole in the entrance. I think it was 3 cadets to a tent.

Set our tent up, went off for the night exercise returning at about 1am to find that one of the cadets had left the tent unzipped and a torch on. The tent was absolutely FULL of flies, bugs and moths all attracted by the torch light.

I left them to it and went off to set up my own bivi.