Plus we don’t have many secretaries anymore and trying to get it on with a copy of Office 365 just isn’t the same…
get your macros out for the lads, eh?
What's wrong with you? No sense of humour??
No one’s mentioned sexytime yet? I mean, you can in a tent, but it’s only socially acceptable at festivals.
It's actually better in tents I reckon. Even the most stable caravans and camper vans will rock a bit, which could wake up other occupants. And having a hard floor is an advantage there.
Sex whilst camping is my favourite. It's f***ing in tents.
Cool breeze I over the buttocks!
In these parts sex in a tent is definitely preferable to sex in a camper van. You don't want to be mistaken for a professional and end up like this:
https://www.leprogres.fr/ain/2016/02/03/deux-camionnettes-de-prostituees-incendiees-a-ambronay
I grew up camping most weekends in the summer. Mum & Dad had an old ridge tent then upgraded to a frame tent (Dad mustv'e had a payrise) We went to the Lakes a LOT & stayed at High Bridge End Farm near Thirlmere, I absolutely loved it & think every child should be shown the great outdoors by tent! It gave me my love & respect for the countryside that's for sure.
Nowadays I've still got my Thermarest, sleeping bag & cooking gear but theyr'e just for bothy trips because......wev'e got a caravan. I couldn't even face putting a tent up & taking it down now, plus crawling around with these knees, no hope.
Iv'e got 4 tents for sale. For details, email in profile.
nowt wrong with tents! for me the main advantage is being able to get miles away from everyone else! ( apartr from you mates if they are invited 😉 You cannot do this in a caravan or camper van!
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Indeed but try pitching your tent outside a music venue to save you driving 159 miles home in the middle of the night.
Or outside your mates house.
Or when the campsite you didn't boom and arrived at at 2 in the morning because of traffic hold ups on xyZ road. Or if the weather was shit and your confined to soggy wet quarters with your soggy wet clothes in November
Tbh the main things I like about my van are the heating and the lavvy
What grinds my gears is the dub crew(mostly) thinking toilets are overrated and pooping all over the place.
And since I didn't trade my tent in for the van. If I want to go the places you have pictured. I can.
Also if my van loses 3 k a year well it's worthless already.
You find it loses less than most rep mobiles year on year even if it's. Not a VW.....provided it's not just some old shitty leaky caravan that's been thrown into the van by someone towing a van and braked hard......although those still get a couple of k even when rotten as a peach
🙂 ~done most of those with a tent Trailrat 🙂 I like camper vans as well - its horses for courses
My tents rock.
Halfway up a mountain or down a river while adventuring.
I'm not convinced for a week, 10' from neighbours, lack of sleep from daylight, creeping damp or belting overheating etc...
I do think the whole VW T5 / California thing is a lifestyle choice and "lifestyle bus" certainly hits the nail on the head.
Expensive Rab down jacket? Check. Traildog spaniel? Check. Meticulously clean Santa Cruz Nomad or Heckler dripping with Kashima strapped to the back? Check. Welcome to the club.
nowt wrong with tents! for me the main advantage is being able to get miles away from everyone else! ( apartr from you mates if they are invited 😉 You cannot do this in a caravan or camper van!
Course not, but I have a choice of comfy accomodation on a site or wild camping in a tent, they aren't exclusive!
I haven't wild camped in far too long, because I have a family that isn't that interested in it....
TBH tents and VW ‘campers’ have more in common than folk think, build quality for one although in most cases the tent edges it 😁
You also can’t impress middle aged men in animal t shirts as much in a tent as you can in a VW....
We've got a roof top tent and we use it quite a bit. Easy to set-up, away from the majority of insects, not on the floor so doesn't get as damp as a ground pitched tent. It's going on top of the Mercedes Vito van that I'm currently converting into a camper, to provide extra accommodation for my teenage daughter. She needs her space!!
Tent and a camper, hated by both 'sides'?
We're just not comfortable sleeping on the ground anymore (it's old age!) though I used to do around 30 days a year. What's certainly the case living in Scotland is that, if you're camping in the highlands and it rains for 36 hours then you just pack up and go home (which means I go back to work as I'm self employed); that's if the midges haven't done the job first. Wet weather things to do are not in great abundance generally.
In the motorhome we have a sofa each to sprawl out on and read a book; you just get sore in a tent.
I wasn't allowed to have my first girlfriend stay over as an 18 year old, but I was allowed to borrow my folk's T2 Shaggin-Wagon for weekends away. Have had a soft spot for campervans ever since!
If you are not comfy sleeping in a tent then you have the wrong kit. Ever so comfy and cosy in mine.
Don't agree Teej. Used to be comfortable but no longer am. Equipment I use is fine.
Tents only here, we have several. I did float the idea of a small teardrop trailer a few days ago, she liked the look of it so one might appear in the future.
Every time I’ve done the sums its just much more comfortable to stay in an upmarket B&B / Hotel
Last time I went down to South Hams in Devon, I camped for nine days, at £10/night.
The pub in the village, where I stayed for a week, B&B, was roughly £75/night.
Now, I’m no economist, but I’d be prepared to say that, with difference in cost of £60/night, the tent perhaps just edges it...
I will happily admit that I ate in said pub every evening, but my bill for food and a couple of pints still came to around £40, which I would have added to the B&B cost, so roughly £50/night for camping, against roughly £115.
I still think the tent edges it, and my Decathlon inflatable, which takes less than thirty minutes to put up, from unpacking the car to sitting outside looking at the view, makes it a doddle. And with my 10cm self inflating double mattress, and a warm sleeping bag, and seven foot headroom with room for four, the only advantage the pub has is being able to go from the bar straight upstairs to bed.
I have a theory that will probably get totally shot down but I reckon camper vans are the new mid-life crisis vehicles. In our parents’ day age mattered more in society so you would demonstrate your continued youth to your peers by buying a sports car to let them know you were still active and virile. Now we work longer and are active later in life but spare time is at a premium more than ever. Therefore, you demonstrate your success by buying a camper van to show others you’re successful enough to have abundant free time.
Meh. My parents bought a campervan when I was about 10. That was 50 years ago. And we were officially poor 🙂
I have a choice of comfy accomodation on a site or wild camping in a tent, they aren’t exclusive!
This. I wild camp more than almost everyone on this forum. I also have a campervan.
I paid £10 a night for the site we stayed in last week, in the caravan.
Okay my tuppenceworth. Though I have to say up front I’m typing this sitting outside a camper van with a nice glass of red part way through a month long trip round France.
I don’t think it’s a case of either or. We love our camper van but also still own several tents ranging from a big one with bedrooms down to my one man backpacking tent.
Van is great but if, for example, we were going down to the Lake District for a week I’d take our big tent as the van is a pain to drive round the narrow roads there. However on a trip where we are moving on every couple of days the van is great. Less hassle to set up or pack away.
Cost wasn’t really the main issue with us. It was getting to a point in life where we realised time is more precious than money. Okay so we aren’t staying in fancy hotels and eating out every night we’re away but holidays are far more chilled and relaxed.
Oh and there’s also the fact the van is more comfortable than the tent but that is maybe just us getting older. Tent or van though it’s a grand way of getting around.
which takes less than thirty minutes to put up, from unpacking the car to sitting outside op at the view, makes it a doddle. And with my 10cm self inflating double mattress, and a warm sleeping bag, and seven foot headroom with room for four,
You listed pretty much all the reasons I have a van- nothing quite landing in a memory foam bed in a solid roof vehicle I can stand up in that's heated to what ever temp I wish with an on board toile after 10-12-24 hrs on a bike. I could make do with a tent but I'm comfier in a van. It makes spontaneous weekends and even nights away happen. Most of our nights away are within 30-1hr of home- and usually in the shoulder seasons as it's when we are not at events. Usually means we are at the trail head for an early start the next day and home for lunch.
I catagorically can say I wouldn't do that jn a Tent -mainly as the tent lives in the cupboard up the stairs. The van lives ready to go
But I do love nights in the tent and the bivvy ...they just take more planning and involve a bike or a run to my bed.
Strathpuffer was sodding miserable in a tent the 6times I did it that way.
Re Strathpuffer......I get where you’re coming from but the Puffer is meant to be miserable. I’ve done six too and still can’t decide if I love it or hate it. Both probably. Doing it in a tent and being cold wet and miserable all weekend just makes the Sunday night hot bath and cold beer all the sweeter.
You might get a kicking and pissed on though – but swings and roundabouts!
Serves you right for camping in a kids' park.
At our advanced age (mid 60s) we are starting to find more than 3 nights in a tent a bit of a chore but you can get to much nicer places without booking. Although Airbnb gets you to nice places without a lot of booking too. Also, as it's windsurfing that takes us away strong winds and extreme temperatures (hot & cold) can be a bit of a bugger in a tent.
I've been at all bar 1 -when I was in New Zealand.
If you want to be miserable between laps or want your support crew to be miserable fairplay.
I certainly wouldn't expect my wife to support me from a tent in -14 (as was 2 years ago when the vans external waterpipes froze)
chickenman - I am older than you by a long way and still nice and comfy. Mind you I have always slept on a very hard bed. I actually find my camping mattress more comfy than most hotel beds
If I had enough money I'd have a tent, a small motorhome and a caravan too.
And I'm even older than TJ 🙂
TJ swears by his hessian sleeping bag. Mind you he did grow up as one of 160 living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road
😉
Sleeping bag? He has a sleeping bag?
He were lucky....
Only gravel to eat as well
And working 29 hours a day.
when I say tent - I mean paper bag but I call it a tent
Paper bag? Luxury!
I had an old crisp packet to sleep in and had to check in the corners if I wanted to eat.
🙂
I don't really like hotels or B&Bs for holidays.
We were on Harris last week and stayed a couple of nights at a campsite (Horgabost for those familiar) in our van (DIY job based on a Ducato - not as achingly hip as a T4/5 but actually has enough space inside to live well and carry all the toys, which kind of seems the point). We had a bit of weather - hiking tents survived as did some mega teepee with an infinite number of guy ropes. But the traditional millets/argos family tents got flattened. 4 of them in a skip the next morning. This is not a good thing in the Outer Hebrides - no shops to speak of to replace them and at this time of year every B&B is full and every ferry off back to the mainland prebooked up. A party of 10 made up of two families with 4 kids under 5 were struggling for a plan B. Other campers rallied around and dug out spare tents to help out but it was not fun for them. Campsite supervisor said the same thing happened the week before and a mini version happened the next day too (mini only because all the easy meat had been nuked on our first night there).
I kicked my van tyres - seemed ok, so popped the kettle on, put the jacket spuds in the oven and went back to reading my book whilst waiting for the weather to pick up.
Haven't read all the comments, and I have to go to bed soon...
I've had a van of some sort for about 19 years now. A Type 2, 2 x T4s and now a T5, it's relatively simple but is comfy and has everything we need. For us a van is much better than a tent, we spend a fair bit of time away in it and a mixture of campsites and discreet spots. The convenience of jumping in it and heading off with minimal fuss and then being "pitched" within 30 seconds of arriving can't be beaten by a tent. Off the top of my head this year we've had 20 nights in it so far and another 13 nights in France at the end of the month, last year we used it even more.
Yes you can get more off the beaten track with a tent, but there's compromises with most things in life.
I do notice on the T5 forums that there are a lot people that seem to buy them just to look at, with comments like "no, of course I don't cook in my van. It would make it smell." Which I find odd, and have awnings the size of a garage. But each to their own 🙂
With the number of people travelling from the bed-bug infested places in the world hotels and B&Bs are less and less attractive. We're back from a walk across Portugal and Spain and had rucksacs infested with univited passengers by the second week. Get home, leave bags at end of garden, strip naked before entering the house, shower and head for the local deep freeze seller (we got dressed first). Everything then has to be frozen for three and a half days (freezer at -29°C). It matters not if you stay in a cheap B&B or 5* hotel there's the same risk it's been infested. The bites take a few days to come up and initially you think they're mozzy bites so we no doubt contaminated a few other places before realising and staying exclusively in the tent rather than further contaminate.
Edit: it's also quite possible that we contaminated the baggage of other passengers in the two busses we took home. Anyhow something to think about when you travel. In future we'll be throwing everything in the freezer for a few days after each trip away.
