Quote: Originally posted by Jim1977 on 11/8/2014
Call us wimps, but if a wet morning pack up is forecast (we look at the BBC weather app the afternoon before), we pack up and go the evening before. This meant a midnight arrival` back home with the kids last Friday (5 hour drive up the M5 with a crack spreading right across our windscreen and kids refusing to nod off!) but no soggy polycotton to dry the next day, and we only missed out on going to bed and then getting up again. The other option if it is forecast to brighten up is to ask for a late departure the next day, which is often possible for a donation in the site tin.
We did this last weekend. Made the decision early Thurday morning. Packed everything up and in the car. Spent the rest of the day at the site in the swimming pool, had dinner at the takeaway, let the kids play with the friends they'd made during their trip til 7:30pm and jumped in the car and went home. The site was quite near our house and we were home by 8pm. Next morning it absolutely bucketed it down at the site and we were at home having a lie in. Bonus
i've found a new use for the kids' trampoline: it makes a useful drying place for a side canopy, although it might also be useful for smaller tents too. had the thing dry in a couple of hours with a bit of unexpected sunshine...
My trips are always two nighters but with all the unsettled weather we have had over the last couple of years, or other reasons, I am finding myself packing up late on day two and going home more and more often.
I am toying with the idea of just booking one night and then either asking for a late stay extension (cheaper than two nights) or booking a second night if all is well and I am enjoying myself.
Perhaps this might not be possible in the busy periods but it may save me a few bob in the quiet periods.
Did you manage to get it dry today, Glitz? It stayed bright and breezy here right up to 4 this afternoon, when the heavens opened with a vengeance. It tipped it down for half an hour and flooded the main road near my house.
We had the Khyam up in the garden for 2 weeks when we came back from the Peaks a few years ago. The poor thing was subjected to 4 weeks of rain, I reckon we brought it with us.
Managed to bring my tent in this afternoon!!!!! Just laid it over the table to dry the under side of the ground sheet. Thanks to everyone so much for your advice :)
I have spent the last five weeks with a rotation of drying tents over the bannisters, I think I've only had about three days with them clear. I religiously dry and air every tent when I get it home no matter how dry I think it was at pack up, this can be a bit of a pitb at times but on the plus side I've never had so much as a speck of mould on any tent in the last 35+ years. It really is worth getting them bone dry.
(Why five weeks? Well, that's four different Scouts trips, two trips for me with DD/a friend, two weekends that OH has gone off with cronies and six individual nights of wild camping for DS. Some of the tents need inners/outers dried separately and the bannisters only hold one or the other of these for the big tents.)
I haven't read through all the posts. Your tent is dry now. But I do recommend that when it is raining, to take down the inner, the tent will weigh less and less bulkier.
I put mine in the bath to drip dry to avoid problems occurring like you had. I turn the the tent every so often to let the tent drain the water of, may take a few days.
Then drape it over furniture or bannister. Like you I have limited space. If sun out, then it goes into the garden.
------------- New Year: Hesketh Bank
Feb/March: Red Squirrel
March: lakes
June: Morecambe
Aug: Lake District(not camping camping)
October: Red Squirrel
Glad to hear you got yours dry and away. For the first time in several years we had a wet tent to get dry yesterday, managed to get ours dry by tea time having spread itout over the washing line, a few garden chairs and a Workmate. Going away next Friday, so it won't be away for that long.