How much space do family size canvas frame tents take up in a car? We have a Ford Focus Estate - would one take up the whole of the boot? We plan to get a roof box for bulky stuff which would free up some space in the boot, but we don't want to tow a trailer as we have a tow bar mounted bike rack. Any advice would be great..
Thanks.
Sarah
------------- Sarah
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We have a 440x750 polycotton tent it does take up quite a bit of room, we have a volvo v70 estate and a roof box.
We can fit it all in and leave half the rear for our dog. It is a struggle but with a bit of patience we can do it, sometimes we can see out of the rear window and sometimes we can't lol!
Our roof box is quite big though!
We can't have a trailer as we have nowhere to store it.
So this combo suite us at the moment, hope that helps, you will get more experienced canvas peops along soon no doubt!
These are the poles, groundsheet and tent, the blue bag is the sun canopy poles! Quite big isn't it
Size wise, in Cabanon terms (other frame tents are available ) you have a couple of options on "family sized".
The Andorra is 4 person (one inner with half/half divide), the Antigua is 5 person (two inners - one 2 and one 3), however I would say that the Andorra would fit 3 max and the Antigua would be 3 comfy and 4 at a push if it was two littlies in the smaller inner.
The Athena/Aruba size is bigger again, 6 person (two inners, one 2 and one 4), it also has double the amount of living space so is a bigger tent with a bigger pack size. I'm hoping to get ours out over the weekend so if I get chance to measure or photograph it I will.
We moved to a trailer when we went to a frame tent. You could put the poles of a frame tent alongside your roofbox as long as you are strong enough to put them up there and as long as you don't exceed your roof weight limit.
We happily pitch our frames for weekends and long weekends - we use an Andorra with utility (toilet) annexe.
The tents themselves take very little time to pitch - I think Cabanon say 20 minutes for Andorra/Antigua sized and for me that's realistic. The frame goes together quickly, pegging is probably the most time consuming part of it.
As usual it depends how much "stuff" you take - the tent is usually the easy part!
Wow, 20 mins is great - I guess you must be very well practised. Would one of the 6 berth ones be ok for two people to put up. The kiddies are only little (3 and 6!) so wouldn't be much help!
We travel fairly light compared with some as at the moment we don't have a roof box so everything has to go in the boot. We have only just bought ourselves a basic camp kitchen - we don't have any storage units, wardrobes or the like. We would definitely get a roof box if we bought a frame tent though.
I was pleasantly surprised at how quick a frame tent is to pitch. Put the poles together (much quicker if all colour coded or labelled with a dymo labeller thingy)
Keep the poles at half height, then very easy with two of you to walk the canvas over the poles. Then with one of you at each side, raise the legs to full height, two at a time to keep things even. And peg.
No putting flimsy poles together, or threading them through channels. Very quick and simple.
to give you an idea of size i recently purchased a Cabanon Aruba and the pack size was 110cm x 46cm x 46cms for the canvas and pretty similar for the poles. total weight was 63Kgs
We also have a Hypercamp canvas tent which weighs 54KGS total length is the same as the Aruba pole bag is roughly 20cms x 20 cms, but the canvas is more like 50cms x 50 cms
An Aruba/Athena would be fine for two to pitch, the only tricky part is lifting the canvas onto the frame as it's heavy and with two of you that will be fine.
As Cathy says Frames are really straightforward to pitch, no bendy poles, no feeding poles through sleeves, just connect the poles together (colour coding helps), add canvas, put up to height and pitch. Easy peasy
An Aruba/Athena would be a lovely size for you as it has more internal space for your littlies. You could fit into a 4 or 5 berth but would probably find the internal space a bit tighter - you may find like most of us you end up with a couple of tents - an Aruba/Athena for longer camps and perhaps an Antigua for shorter weekends where you expect better weather or intend to be out and about a lot.
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Topic: FAO Canvas Frame tenters!
Reckon we might get away with it though.
