which tent for cycle touring?

rickyd13

hi everyone.

i'm looking for some advice on which tent i should be looking to buy for a cycle touring trip from the uk to egypt (starting in september). i'm sure this is a question that's been asked many times before and i anticipate to be traveling approximately 4500 miles so i guess the lighter the better. however i was wandering whether people tend to opt for a tent with a large porch area for bike storage and peace of mind over night or whether they leave bikes (to their fate) outside overnight. i will be mostly traveling by myself but expect to be joined by friends for certain stages. i'm considering a terra nova laserlarge 3 which comes in at around 2.3kg and has ample storage for a bike - but is this just too heavy? any suggestions much appreciated

Stuck on a Giant

Hi

We purchased a Terra Nova Laser Large 3 for a cycling touring holiday to France in June and are very pleased with it. Terra Nova do a trade in discount for your old tent - details are on their website. We were pretty pleased with the amount of porch space for putting our panniers in and the tent overall. But one thing we did notice, which never happened on our previous tent, was a lot of condensation on the outside in the morning which meant packing away the tent wet. Not sure if your bike would fit in the porch area we just locked them to a nearby tree. Regarding the weight - it was lighter than our previous tent with a lot more space and good to keep the panniers out of the dry sleeping area.

ralex

Don't worry too much about the weight, on a trip of that length, after a few weeks on the road, you will be fit enough to load all kinds of stuff on your bike and you won't notice the extra kg here or there. Get a tent that will be strong enough and weatherproof enough and with which you will be happy having as your home for several months. I would suggest a Hilleberg but they are of course kind of expensive, and not necessarily the best for hot climates.

andymiller

rickyd13 wrote:

h i was wandering whether people tend to opt for a tent with a large porch area for bike storage and peace of mind over night or whether they leave bikes (to their fate) outside overnight.

My impression is that very few people do, but an extra 800g (over the smallest LaserLarge) compares well with the weight of a lock. I'm sceptical though about whether you really can get a bike in the porch.

FWIW I'm very happy with my standard LaserLarge which is luxuriously roomy but still weighs in at 1.5kg.

One thing to be aware of is that you can't repair the poles by putting on a repair sleeve. You could carry a spare pole but Terra Nova suggested using a spare spoke or a tentpeg as a splint (with gaffer tape).

Oh and the tent pegs are really easy to lose - get some high-viz cord or sleeving to put on them or you'll lose them!

amaferanga

I completely disagree that the weight doesn't matter. If you go down that route you can end up carrying 30kg of kit and grovelling up every slight incline! I recently did LEJOG and was amazed at the amount of stuff people carried - 4 panniers, bar bag and rack bag. For comparison, here's my packed bike during a trip to Morocco back in 2007:



Camping gear, tools, clothes, food all in 2 small (front) panniers, a rack bag and bar bag.

You should try to minimise the weight of all your equipment. Some people take it to extremes like this guy, but if you can save even a few hundred grams of most bits of kit then you can travel light and faster and/or further for the same effort.

My current tent is a Big Agnes SL2. It comfortably takes two people plus panniers, but weighs only about 1.6kg complete. You don't need to keep your bike in the tent so lugging around a tent that weighs an extra kilo just for that is a waste of energy. You can either chain your bike to a tree or (what I usually do) pitch the porch of your tent over your bike so that in the unlikely event that someone should try to steal it overnight it'll be impossible to do without waking you.

GyatsoLa

In my experience, tents are as personal a thing as saddles - to get the right one for your tour you need to think hard about what exactly you want from a tent.

First off, I agree with Amaferanga - weight does really matter, and so does pack size. Life is a lot easier with smaller, lighter loads on the bike - a difference in weight of a kilo is quite common in superficially similar tents, and while a kg does not seem a lot, translate that into spare tops, shorts, socks, etc., and you'll see it makes quite a difference to what you can carry.

I'd suggest first of all measuring your head height when sitting down. This will let you know the minimum head height you need for comfort. Then think about where you are likely to camp to check and see if a 3 season tent will do, or you need something capable of standing up to storms and high winds. If you will mostly be camping in hot weather, you will probably want something that has an inner or outer pitch option. I think US brands tend to design more for hot weather, while UK, northern European or NZ brands assume lots of rain and wind!

Another issue is whether you'll be staying in guesthouses - in my experience having a free standing option is good for dodgy third world guesthouses as it can operate as a de facto mossie/roach protector as you sleep.

In some circumstances, having a porch for a bike is handy, but it does mean a very big tent and it can be a very tight fit. I think that for most tourers, the best option is just put your guy ropes in and around the bike to make it hard for a thief to take it while you sleep. Some people take a little lightweight tarp and just cover it with that to keep rain off and make it less visible. But decent porch space is essential IMO for a bike tent as panniers can get very dirty so you don't really want to bring them into your living space.

Another issue is whether you'll be wild camping or not - dark camo colours are very useful if you intend to do this.

The tent that I've found that fulfils most (not all) the criteria that I personally have is the MSR Hubba. the Big Agnes Seedhouse also comes very close.

andymiller

GyatsoLa wrote:

I think that for most tourers, the best option is just put your guy ropes in and around the bike to make it hard for a thief to take it while you sleep.

I'm always a bit sceptical about this one. It sounds like a recipe for getting your tent wrecked as well as your bike nicked. And how many people are going to wake up, find their way out of a collapsed tent in the pitch dark and then confront bike thieves? Call me a coward, but not me.

Amafarenga - why are you hiding your On-One logo with parcel tape?

Jaeger

Have used an MSR Hubba Hubba with no probs before. Somewhere around 1.8kg i think?!

rickyd13

thanks for all your help on this one. think i may go light and attempt pitching guy ropes over/around the bike. fingers crossed i don't end up trapped in a collapsed tent in the dark without a bike! thanks again

daviddd

There are very few people out there looking to pinch a bike from a campsite. I stayed at a couple of hundred in Oz with no trouble. We can get paranoid about these things. I used an MSR Hubba Hubba too after a great deal of thought. I t performed superbly in evry way, but you have to handle it very carefully - I was a bit clumsy and damaged it a couple of times. I would NEVER put a bike in a tent! I didn't worry about weight too much either - hauling up to 50kg when away from water supplies (15 litres carried) but didn't begrudge as I like my creature comforts - each to his own though.

amaferanga

andymiller wrote:

Amafarenga - why are you hiding your On-One logo with parcel tape?

I could say for commercial reasons, but I'd be lying. The rather unextraordinary reason is that it was there as padding for the flight and since it didn't get in the way I just left it on....

xilios

I would go for a tent with a large porch area but not for the bike but storing the bags, and having some extra room (for cooking) in case of foul weather. As far as bike security, I use a cable lock and have rigged a 120db purse alarm with fishing line and a paper clip and I hook it up a spoke on the bike. So if the bike is moved it will wake up the whole campsite
http://www.bike-journeys.com/2008%20Maa ... w2d1p1.jpg
Hopefully they would just drop the bike and run.
cheers

amaferanga

xilios wrote:

....So if the bike is moved it will wake up the whole campsite

I bet you'd be popular then

andymiller

xilios wrote:

As far as bike security, I use a cable lock and have rigged a 120db purse alarm with fishing line and a paper clip and I hook it up a spoke on the bike. So if the bike is moved it will wake up the whole campsite

More of a :shock: I'd have thought.

I've got an alarm built into the cable lock. Only trouble is it weighs a ton and starts to misbehave when water gets into the connections.

xilios

I did forget the alarm one morning, (it was embarrassing) but now I know it works.
This set up is very light and cheap at about 5 euro's.

JeremyintheCzechRepublic

I had a bike 'n' hike tent which had a large porch area which was big enough to park two bikes without dismantling them. I was very happy with it until the poles snapped in a storm when I was in the Pyrenees.
Jeremy

http://www.jeremytaylor.eu

jay_clock

Don't worry too much about the weight,

that had me laughing too!. I went to NZ with too much and regretted it. I did a one week tour with much less and it made a massive difference.

See here for my musings www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/france 2009

With regards tent my new one is much smaller and much lighter, a T2 Ultralight pro from Decathlon. Excellent tent for one person

clanton

Jay your link doesn't seem to be working correctly.

jay_clock

www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/france2009 - sorry I put a space in by mistake

El Gordo

Weight does matter but you have to keep it in perspective. I have a TN Laser which weight all of 1.2kg (for two people). Then as the tour goes on I find myself carrying 8 litres of water, several paperbacks, a pannier full of food, a replacement set of 'proper' tent pegs after the silly carbon fibre things shattered... the list goes on.

It sort of made me wonder what the point of saving half a kilo was when I could've had a decent porch.

robthehungrymonkey

All this talk of taking too much stuff....

What shouldn't we take that most people take but don't need?

I'm riding to Morroco from the UK early next year and am planning on taking quite a lot of stuff. Pretty much all of it I deem essential!
I'll be gone for 5 weeks (though, there are two of us so can share cooking equipment - different tents though), so I need quite a few things.

stacyandconners

If budget isn't such a big consideration (think of the opporutnity cost of staying in hotels) then we couldn't recommend the Vaude Ferret highly enough. We invested in the Vaude Ferret III. It weighs less than 5kg, is very roomy and you can get two bikes and all panniers in the vestibule. Packs down small too.
http://www.vaude.com/en_NL/tents.html
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geoff_ss

My wife and I used a Hilleberg Stalon 3 pole tunnel tent. Certainly not the smallest and lightest but comfortable enough to spend a couple of days in if the weather's really bad. They are expensive but they are very good and light for their size (3kg IIRC). I know a couple in the Tandem Club used one for a world tour a few years ago.

Certainly weight is a consideration and it's possible to travel very light if the weather's likely to be good or you don't mind really roughing it. However we ended up with a tent big enough for us and the bikes overnight as well as a couple of Thermarest chairs touring in both the Pyrenees and the Alps. OK, we probably only did one col a day fully loaded sometimes but we were on holiday and looking for scenery rather than 'experiences'. Plus we were both in our late 50s early 60s though quite fit.

We also used 4 panniers each, mostly for weight distribution rather than capacity. The extra capacity was useful for storing food shopping. We kept the weight down to below 20kg each (including bikes) to keep within the airline baggage allowance.

Geoff

t4rmac

I toured in NZ a couple of years ago with a Terra Nova Laser Large 2. It has three zips, one on the inner and two on the fly. They all broke in the first week of touring (we'd trialled the tent for a couple of days in the UK). We had the zips replaced and they're still going strong. Product quality is key - we were lucky to find someone who had worked fixing sails so was able to patch the tent for us. An accomplice had a Hilleberg tunnel tent which stood up to everything. They're more expensive but I regretted not paying the extra.

apreading

Talk about resurrecting old posts...!