With the Jenn Ride booked, i’m conscious i’ve only bivvied on lovely warm summer nights, lucky me.

Going to get a tarp (have a bivvy bag) just in-case.

Any recommendations?

Was looking at the alpkit one; https://www.alpkit.com/products/rig-3-5

Anyone care to share a photo of their set up?

Seen some photos of people using their handlebars rather than a pole, anyone a photo of this? Is it a monumental faff?

For a single person the Rig3.5 is fine, in summer my wife and I have used it for two but the Rig 7 is much roomier and better in those circumstances.

I’ve a similar tarp that I use with the bike handlebars for one end, so one pole at the “open” end with the bike at the foot end. If you lay the bike down with the wheels pointing towards where you want to pitch the tarp it takes a lot of tension to move the bike, much more than you need to correctly tension the tarp. Here’s a very blurred shot

I use what might be termed a dropped A-frame see the second shot here The Rig3.5 has three tie-outs along the ridge line at 1/4, 1/2 & 3/4 points. If you consider zero is the front then use a line from the 3/4 tie-out to your handlebars to help pull the tail up a bit.

I really need to get some decent shots of my tarp setups.

Rather than edit and potentially messing up the previous post. 😐

What’s hard to see in that shot is that there’s a very thin line going from the tarp to the handlebars. It’s simply looped on the top part at the grip, simple tension is holding it there.

Unless there’s a strong wind you don’t really need the sides of the tarp to touch the ground, any rain/drizzle will just drop off the edges. This is one advantage of a tarp: you can choose the amount of ventilation to adjust for temperature/condensation. So if it’s a warm night with a breeze keep the sides up and the breeze will cool you down a bit. Conversely if it’s cool you can set the tarp with the windward side to the ground to stop draughts and the leeward side raised to give a bit more room. If In the photo if I wanted the tarp to be lower then I’d move the pole further away from the tarp.

As with anything you need to have a few goes at setting a tarp up. If you do a search you’ll find people who “know 27 different ways to pitch a tarp”. All well and good but in practice you’ll only use one or two so learn those well. I use the “dropped- A” for smaller tarps like the Rig3.5 as it gives the best compromise (a common word when considering tarps and pitching them) between space and protection. With the Rig7 I use the 2-pole mid (see this page for that ) which is almost a tent.

Some people use linelocks on the adjustment lines but I use Midshipman’s Hitches – doesn’t rely on anything other than the line itself, and you can’t lose/break the bit of plastic. Again worth learning how to tie whichever knots/hitches you might need, probably Bowline, Midshipman’s hitch and trucker’s hitch are enough.

Cheers whitestone, some great food for thought.

What pole do you use on the open end?

When we started using tarps I just made some poles up from the poles of an old Wild Country tent that had died – I’d kept the poles “just in case”. I made the sections a bit shorter so they’d fit in my partial frame bag. Still use these for the Rig3.5 and Rig7 tarps.

The pole in that shot is a carbon fibre pole 1100mm* long made by Stuart from Bearbones – look on the shop – shelter section of the site, there’s DAC and carbon options. He’ll make the pole or poles to whatever length and number of sections you want, the sections are shock corded together in the same way that tent poles are.

* I think, I can check tonight.

Wicked, cheers.

Here’s some setups I’ve used:

View post on imgur.com

Every setup is different, and depends on the ground, surroundings and weather.