My niece thinks she's found the perfect (at present non-existent) job for me...
A camping equipment tester.
She thinks I'm becoming a bit of a camping nerd.
Over BH weekend, after I'd extolled the virtues of the Coleman Dual Fuel amongst other things, her eyes stopped glazing over, and she said that should be my vocation.
Short of going on Mastermind with 'Tents and Camping Equipment 2006 to the current day with a few 1960-70 and 80s thrown in' she may have a point!
Does this actually exist - is equipment tried and tested before going onsale, or is there a camping Which or equivalent?
Yes there are testers and manufactures give gear to certain journalists to test and write up . I have a German friend who's a photo journalist / tester/ adventurer for Tourtec he gets bike gear camping gear etc etc and Hilberg gave him a £600 tent to test for his trip to Mongolia .
Alot of the gear is tested by magazines and there are some really top notch outdoorsy shops that won't sell stuff they haven't tried and tested personally .
I could cope with that job too. I think one of the best places to get a job like that is a camping magazine, the journalists will be recruited to road test and review so if you really want a job like that, get in touch with them!
Myself and a friend about 15years ago .We got to try out a tunnel tent.Free to use whenever we wanted, We did have to go out in it for a minimum of 14 days spread over a year..Pluss we then had to send it back once we had used it, Allthough it was fun ,There is a lot of paper work,Pluss hiden cost`s .Even today we have never seen the type of tent we tested on any of our travels..