Does anyone have any recommendations for family tents?

Looking for a four man, where everyone sleeps at on end (we have small children). Not looking to spend a fortune and there seems to be quite a wise range of prices out there without it really being that obvious what you get for your money.

Hi gear Gobi 4 🙂
http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/hi-gear-gobi-elite-4-tent-p286266

I have young kids and wanted some separation, so went for the “pods at both ends” option!!! Decathlon make nice tents at good prices. Mine goes up in 2 mins, down in 5 single handed.

If you are really keen on camping and want to do a fair bit with all the equipment, then you’ll soon realise that steel poles guarantee a perfectly pitched and solid tent. However, they cost far more and are very heavy.
We started with a large Vango Tigris tent, which was good for room, but leaked in bad weather and suffered in the wind.
I am now using an Outwell Vermont, after a friend bought the montana 6p. Yes its massive, but that means rainy days can be spent in the perfectly dry inside. Its the next best thing to a trailer tent. Its also 2x25kg bags 😯 Not great for getting into the loft! Its also a lot of cash, but I bought it in sale late last summer and saved a good few £

Outwell Bear Lake 6 here.

eye watering expensive at RRP but it was less than half price in a closing down sale.

its massive and takes up most of the boot to the point we are probably buying a van so we can take stuff other than just the tent…

In our group of friends who we do family camping trips with we have Outwell, Vango, Khyam and Kampa. Mix of steel and fibreglass pole models. All seem good for their respective prices. The only HiGear was replaced with a Vango after it started leaking. I’d also consider decathlon tents too.

Very happy with our Kampa Woolacombe 4 espescially for the price !

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1MjkUgvTEs[/video]

We bought a Vango Icarus a couple of years ago and it works pretty well as a starter tent.

I’m flogging it if you’re interested in a cheap option? It’s a four berth Icarus 500 and have also got the internal carpet and footprint too. Only used four times and looking for £125 for the lot.

We’ve had loads of tents over the years from the huge, steel poled family ones to little pop-up decathlon jobs.

It all depends on your need, your boot size and what you expect from it. If you expect to be camping on the continent in sunshine, indoor living space isn’t as necessary – we use a small tent and a tarp. If you intend on setting it up for a 2 week holiday in the lakes, then a large steel framed tent with loads of space is perfect.

For overnight stops we use a 4 person pop-up tent from Decathlon (we have one with a porch and one without but the one with gets more use).

For extended stays, we have a Vango Orchy 500 which is fairly rigid but not too heavy as it has carbon poles although it’s still a pain to put up and take down compared to the pop up.

As a compromise, i’d suggest this one:

4.2 XL Decathlon

Decathlon definitely worth a visit, take the kids, all the tents are up in the store.

We have an outwell Baltic sea large. As above, bought in a sale at well below rrp. It is polycotton, so no problems with condensation and makes for a very pleasant environment inside. V easy to pitch.

However, when folded up it is massive and very heavy. As per superfli above, it takes a very determined effort to get it into the loft.

Edit – before this we had a vango something. That was awful – hard to pitch, bits kept falling off it and it looked ropey in high winds. Swapped it for a couple of bottles of wine. 🙂

If Yeomans have their camping exhibitions this year, see if you can get to one of them. Loads of tents to wander around, the kids will love it, deals to be had on display tents when they finish the show.

Always worth reading the reviews at http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/tents/

Something we’re looking at as well….how do bell tents stack up against tents like the Montana? We stayed in one last year for a couple of nights and found it a pleasant place to be even though the weather was awful. Less space obviously but seem easy to put up.

we car camp with a coleman 6 person two sleeping pod tent . all three of us in one pod second used as play/storage area.

Something we’re looking at as well….how do bell tents stack up against tents like the Montana? We stayed in one last year for a couple of nights and found it a pleasant place to be even though the weather was awful. Less space obviously but seem easy to put up.

We have a 5m bell tent and its a fair old size inside. Very heavy all in, close to 40kg but proved to be very weather proof. We have a log burner in ours, which makes it very cosy inside,4 or 5 degrees out side, but shorts and t-shirts inside. Very easy to put up/take down, around 10-15 minutes id say.

We have one of these http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/hi-gear-voyager-elite-6-family-tent-p286234. The design of this tent makes it strong in the wind. It’s spacious inside, over 6.5 foot tall in the middle with one small and one large bedroom. It’s ok for longer trips on it’s own but we also bought a separate porch which has a separate front you can zip on for wet days.

There isn’t a perfect tent for all occasions but as said above for longer trips you will probably want a bigger & more solid tent. For weekend trips it’s nice to be able to set everything up within half an hour. A biggish tent with a separate porch could be a good compromise.

Vango palena 600 here.
Happy And very comfortable even in bad weather.
Heavy and bulky but I’m happy with that for the comfort.
Go Outdoors is great for deals if you aren’t in a rush.

gotama – I’ve got and love a soulpad 4m bell tent. plenty space and big enough for me (6’2″) to stand up and walk around in. Took about 15 mins to put up first time, about 7 with a bit of practice, one person to erect. stable and weatherproof as well.
weighs a ton and wasn’t cheap.
the one i wanted was out of stock so the nice people at soulpad sent me the next model up at no extra cost – it’s fitted to take a woodburner and I am so tempted, it’s just that would be a hell of an extra amount of weight to carry about. still, a woodburner in a canvas tent has to be worth several million stw niche points.

EDIT oh cool and you can now get a water tank to bolt on to the woodburner.

Only heard great things about Outwell. We have a Hi Gear Mojave 5 however our next tent will be a proper canvass/professional £500ish jobbie.

We have a Vango Nadina 600 which for two adults and a 3yo is overkill but gives us loads of space. Steel poles which weigh 20kg on their own plus the canvas at another 15kg means it’s heavy and it’s quite bulky. Needs two people to put up. We used a Coleman pop up 4 man thing for stopovers which was great as it could be put up or taken down in 10 minutes, although you need to practice the folding technique.

Possibly overkill (theres only 3 of us)- go BIG on your tent if its going in your car. Why not? It takes the same amount of time to assemble and packs down to not much bigger. Also take lots of cushions and blankets etc…
Glampin at its best 😀

you could probably park the car in ours if you wanted…

So much choice and lots of good suggestions above, particularly the Decathlons for a newbie camper

If you are a newbie then get something cheap/small easy to put up and suitable to be used as a second/weekend tent because within a year or so you’ll have a better idea about what you want from a tent etc – hint canvas/polycotton is much better to spend time in but with the downside of more weight, bulk and expense. I’d also be looking at outside space, Coleman Event shelters seem to be the go to solution for this, it’s much better to have a smallish tent with outdoor space than a massive tent without.

Bimbler if its chucking it down/bad weather you’ve got a nice enclosed space to relax/read in/drink in…

Outwell Montana 6 here. Bought off a friend of a friend with loads of accessories for £170. You can get similar for not a lot more off ebay/gumtree.
Great tent at that price. Friends have the next size tent up and love that one too.
Only thing we are missing really is a carpet, which keeps the chill off your feet (No shoes in the tent please!)

Nice to have a couple of windbreaks too.

No time to read all of the above and I see you dont want to spend too much but after buying a number of tents over the years (my kids are 18 and 16 now) by far the best (and most expensive( is the Outwell. Extremely well made.

This is ours, as jambo says you could fit the car in it. If you can’t find a carpet get some fleece blankets, we had to as we couldn’t find a carpet for ours in time for the holiday.

Jam bo – where is that campsite please? Looks lovely.

jambo is that cote savauge in france?

Sunncamp vulcan 600 here , it’s been discontinued but if you can find one it’s definitely worth snapping up . Aluminium poles and geodesic design means it doesn’t move around like a lot of tents on the market, we’ve been camping in gale force winds and been cosy whilst others are packing up/throwing away broken tents.
It also looks like Darth Vaders helmet so that makes it extra cool!

Atlantic View, Porthcothan, cornwall. Five minute walk from there to this:

Thanks. Buy tent, book slot, looks amazing.

Ha we stop at ‘old macdonalds’ just round the corner , Porthcothan is a cracking family beach.

i think you only really have to book a slot in august. rest of the year its just a case of rock up and find a pitch. That was during that great weather we had late september this year.

basic but who cares when you wake up with a view like that.

We have the vango amazon 600 for five of us plus dog.
It is huge, meaning we pay big tent surcharges on sites that have that pricing structure.
Steel poles, footprint and carpet all bagged up seperately ending up with the tent taking up probaly 30% of the space in our Touran.
We are not expert or seasoned campers, having spent only two summers doing this, but all I would say is dont be too impressed by buying a massive one. We did, and its great for space, but we feel it is too big. I cant get excited at the prospect of a quick weekend away knowing that I will have a fight for 90 minutes or so,huffing and puffing and getting fractious with the Mrs as we put it up.
We are probably going to sell it and buy sometthing smaller, and easier to put up. I must confess to being won over by the inflatable tents from Vango and Outwell. Their new tiaga looks spot on for us.
Also, dont buy loads of kit. We did, its all to transport, unpack, pack up and bring home.
Not selling camping am I? You need to be fairly clear what type of holidays you’ll take. We probaly won’t now do more than 4 nights due to terrible weather luck and the whole five people and a dog in a tent for a week, looking at rain, stir crazy feeling. If you are thinking of a week away, or longer, a tent like ours would make an fantastic base.
For weekends, its too much.

quite theraputic, writing that!

I love camping.

Another Montana 6 here. One of the early ones where some of the windows and flyscreens open completely (which is great when cooking or it’s really hot).

A carpet is a great addition, and the footprint is also useful, not only for keeping the base dry if you need to pack it away early, but also for walking about the pitch to see where the tent will fit best.

It takes 2 of us 20 minutes to pitch and about the same to cram it all back into the bags. Weighs about 20kg, and does take up some space in the car, but the extra space inside is worth it for camping in the UK in summer.

Datsunman, I’m interested in your tent, where abouts are you based ?

We have had loads over the years I use them a fair bit with scouts, and school trips as well as family use and I don’t look after them.
The wife has tent envy and wants the biggest tent on the site, but I’m the bugger who has to put it up.
My main family tent now is a vango icarus 500 which we also have the porch for, I can put it up on my tod in under 10 minutes.

Got a 5m bell tent here. Usually up, carpets laid and chandelier lit in around 20 mins tops. Used in the hot south of France when it was nice and cool. Also used it in the wet UK when the space inside was well appreciated. Absolutely brilliant tent. Only down side, as with all tents is it wants to be dry when put away.