Message Forums

Looking at decent sites in West Cornwall and some now only have gravel hard standing for tents, presume since last years bad weather.  We've no experience of gravel and wonder how uncomfortable it is underfoot and how much damage it will cause to the tent.  How many layers of extra groundsheet we might need, we have read that special rock pegs are needed etc. but are more worried about damage than anything?  Have many members camped on this type of ground?

We did it once in France (see pic).

Had no trouble, groundsheet still intact. If we did it again we would probably put a cheap tarp under tent (we have a footprint groundsheet now in any case.

We camped on a gravel hardstanding last summer....it was either that or go home as the site was flooded elsewhere.

We had no footprint at the time and a brand new tent. The site lent us a tarp and we raided the local supermarket for cardboard and put this under the tent. We only had normal pegs, which were beginning to work loose by the end of the week but the tent stood up to some hefty weather that week.

We had no problems, and have booked for a hardstanding again this summer on the same site.

No mud in the tent either.

I would prefer to camp on lovely dry grass.....but in this country there is no guarentee, and as this was our main holiday we didn`t want to cancel

Have been away this weekend and there was a huge Outwell Vermont pitched on hardstanding, must take some heating in this weather! I didn't get to speak to them or I would have asked what they used to protect the groundsheet.

The layer of cardboard between the footprint and the SIG would be ok in dry weather, but could be a soggy mess if it was rainy.

How about making another footprint out of breathable groundsheet to go between the two layers? Or cut up some plastic backed picnic rugs and tape together to get the shape?

We have camped on gravel in France. It had quite a thick covering of grass so it was OK. But we had to buy rock pegs.

Alan