blogtribe

We bought a tent on Saturday, we didn’t intend to get one yet but Argos had a one week only sale and the tent we’d looked at had £33.33 reduction, good enough for us to decide to get it early. Bev being Bev woke up Sunday morning and decided we needed to test it and after ringing around numerous local campsites decided to listen to me and agreed to go to my mams to test the tent (my mam having fields to pitch the tent in :) ).

So Sunday afternoon off we went, 4 kids (our 3, Jade, Nathan and Bethany and Jades best friend Dayna) and tent in tow, off to my mams, all of 2 miles away at the other end of Ashington. We pitched the tent following all the instructions in order, yes I do follow instructions, often to sighs from all directions because others want to just dig in with trial and error. The tent itself is a lovely tent, spacious with 2 bedrooms and not super heavy (only 11kg) and very easy to put up. This was when we noticed what may become a problem, there are rings and pins which the tent poles fasten to and these are connected by straps, which in a good way means the tent cannot go out of shape. The problem lay in the fact that when set up the poles down the left side of the doorway seemed to be being bent out of shape because they seemed in the wrong position, but there was no other position they could go in because they were fastened to the rings and pins.

We kept an eye on the poles and they seemed to be a little more misshapen by morning. It was raining on Monday when we were leaving so we decided to leave the tent in place and come back the following day (today) to dismantle it so it was dry before packing. Well when we went back the poles were way out of shape so the tent is going back, not happy because apart from this problem it is a nice tent, decision now is do we risk getting another the same and hope it was a flaw in just the one tent or do we just take our money and run!?!

I’ll let you know :)

I meant to use my phone to blog on Sunday night to test out the posting by mail again but couldn’t be bothered. :) Anyway the kids thoroughly enjoyed the time, a huge field with nothing in it but our tent meant they could kick the ball, hit the ball or throw the ball as hard as they wanted and didn’t have to worry about windows. Many games of kick rounders, football and cricket were played that evening and also carried on the following morning in the rain.

Card games and ghost stories continued until the light from the rechargeable lamp ran out (didn’t have much charge left in it apparently) Once the light went out we decided we may as well go to bed and sleep (yeah right) where we were regaled by more stories, singing and recital of films by the kids until who knows when. I had forgotten how much the kids actually love camping so more effort required to make sure we do it again soon I think.

The original plan with the tent was to go on a cycling/camping holiday next year, not sure if the kids are prepared to wait that long now but no way are we ready to do a cycling/camping holiday this year. Watch this space…

Signing off with: [Revolution Deathsquad by DragonForce] from the album [Inhuman Rampage] [00:23/07:53]