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 Topic: Improving camping experience in the wind
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30/3/2024 at 2:55pm
Location: London
Outfit: Lunar Cosmos 524
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Welcome.
I've camped in a variety of tents big and small, canvas and synthetic fabrics, for some 55 years, and I think a degree of 'flapping' is inevitable and never to be eliminated entirely, but there is a lot of variability and a few tricks to minimise.
Just to set a standard, I also have a caravan, and despite being properly sited with all levelling and steadies properly employed, I've been rocked in my bed and watched cups of tea 'slopping' gently when sitting on a rigid fitted cabinet! .... and the banshees howl around the roof vents etc! - if it's not a brick house, it'll move in a wind!
Quite obviously some tents are more wind resistant than others, yours is a lightweight tunnel tent with flexible fibre poles, it's perhaps one of the more 'wobbly' types in a wind! I've got a larger 5 berth (long obsolete now) Outwell tunnel tent with all heavy steel poles and heavy synthetic flysheet, it's rated for use up to force 7 (38mph) winds IIRC, and it's survived them! Lots of neat features like guys being double attached to both fly sheet and steel poles makes it very stable, but even so, there is a certain amount of 'flapping' of the fabric between the poles.
How level your tent is makes a difference, if it has a 'twist' in it because of an unlevel pitch, it's difficult to tension flysheet properly. Orientation of tent to wind can make a hell of a difference, generally you don't want the doorway facing prevailing winds, but equally you want to present the side/end of least resistance towards the wind. Also if you present the bedroom end towards the wind it'll likely get more buffeting than if downwind!
After a day of being pitched, both the flysheet and guy ropes will have relaxed a little and may need retentioning, after strong winds or rain it may also need guys retentioning.
The lighter weight the fabric, the more it tends to 'flap' the more flexible the poles the more the tent 'wobbles' as a rough guide.
Many decades ago I was camping in a 1960's (the first airbeam!) canvas igloo tent, and it was an 'interesting' night in the storm camped on top of a Dorset cliff, come the morning practically ALL the neighbours had either already packed and gone with their then fashionable frame tents or were in the process of packing to leave, we stayed! But it demonstrated that some tents are more durable and tolerable than others.
5 years ago we were camping in France when the infamous Storm Miguel hit. Again another heavy steel poled 6 berth tunnel tent, fortunately a typical French campsite with lots of bushes around the pitch to provide some shelter (the big trees were more of a worry as we had visions of them falling!!!), and the storm went on for many hours if not longer than a day IIRC, but we survived OK, it was pretty noisy in the tent as it was thrashing more than flapping, but we slept!
Personally, so long as the flapping walls don't actually contact me, I can sleep through it without much difficulty. It's almost relaxing and soporific listening to the more gentle movements of the tent. Think you have to relax and be confident that no harm is going to come to you or tent, I guess I have the experience, and you are yet to become at ease. Persevere, you'll probably get there.
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31/3/2024 at 11:18am
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A tent is a temporary building, it's function is to enclose space. It then protects that space from the weather and from pilferers both human and animal and also provides privacy. Imagine camping without a tent!
When it rains the ground softens, when the wind joins the rain it will start working on your tent pegs, the wind is not continuous it strikes like a series of hammer blows and not always from exactly the same direction.
If you put your tent up properly and put all your pegs in at 45' then it will last longer. As a tent peg is slowly pulled out of the ground the guy line it supports slackens and the tent fabric starts flapping in the wind putting even more stress on the already weakened tent peg.
I've camped on "dirty" sand on the coast and put bungie straps between guy lines and their pegs on the windward side. The elastic stretches when the wind blows keeping the peg in the ground and stopping the tent fabric from flapping and being damaged.
In England and Western France the wind is normally from the SW, if you get a choice put the back end of your tent to the SW. If you are using a giant tunnel tent with glass fiber poles and the wind is hitting it from the side the poles will begin to fray, split and break, beware.
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31/3/2024 at 5:42pm
Location: London
Outfit: Lunar Cosmos 524
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Bramston has added some very valid points, TBH, you do a lot of this stuff without giving any thought to it after years of camping, so it doesn't always flood back when answering a question.
What has occurred to me after my last post - Pick your site AND pitch carefully! Read reviews, some sites are notorious for being exposed and subject to excessive winds, and some pitches on a site are far more exposed than others, previous campers often comment on such things in their reviews!
The prevailing wind in most of UK is from the SW, so sites/pitches directly exposed to that are always likely to be the windiest! But a check of the weather forecast for the forthcoming days (anything beyond days tends to be pretty unreliable!) may show a front approaching from a different direction, and may be worth heeding.
Perhaps best to avoid well known 'windy' sites if you want a better camping experience, and not be put off for life!
Bit of a 'Marmite' choice, a tree line or hedgerow can offer a lot of shelter, but some like more wide open pitches. Camping directly under trees has it's issues, twigs, bird droppings, sap/gum, dripping water from the tree can drop on your tent, but if the pitch allows, a happy medium is sometimes available, not directly under the trees, but afforded some shelter by them. The French camp sites tend to be quite good at having hedges and shrubs surrounding pitches to provide both privacy and a degree of shelter, UK sites rarely do in such a deliberate way, but a few out there.
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01/4/2024 at 3:26pm
Location: Cirencester
Outfit: VW Caddy Maxi Life
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Quote: Originally posted by pgallego96 on 30/3/2024
Hi all,
My wife and I have tried camping twice so far, and while we do love the experience, the winds have ruined the sleeping part both times. First time we were unlucky and booked to camp during an amber warning storm, and the second it was with gusts of 30mph which meant we just gave up and left as it was forecast for worse winds the next night (after the first experience we decided it wasn't worth it this time).
We have a Quechua Arpenaz 4.1, we got it as we thought it would be better to test out if we liked camping before commiting to anything expensive. We have found it to be extremely prone to moving in the wind, and the flapping noise is really bad at night.
Is this something that happens with most polyester tents? Or would upgrading to a better quality one help us with sleep in the wind?
Your post made us smile. Our first trip was to Nicholaston camp site on the Gower in Wales, we pitched at the top of the hill with a lovely view of the sea ... it got extremely windy 3rd day in and we were hanging on to the poles (Hi Gear Hampton), it was extremely rustly and flappy. We packed up and came home.
We gave the tent to our daughter and promptly bought an Outwell Parkdale 4 Air. Last August we were in Cornwall during some Storm (name forgotten), four people had to hold the tent down but it did ride it out well.
We've booked a couple of sites for this year and hoping the weather will be kind to us this time :)
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01/4/2024 at 5:41pm
Location: Devizes Wiltshire
Outfit: MWB2BVW2BCrafter2
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Welcome to UKCS!
I researched and switched to a cotton canvas Dutch pyramid tent after my trusted Khyam Freelander collapsed during storm Katia back in 2011.
Dutch pyramid tents are billed as storm-resistance when pitched with the sloping side towards the wind.
Canvas is also a lot quieter in the wind, and cosier too providing the tent has a sewn in or zipped in groundsheet.
It is worth investing on a good cotton canvas Dutch pyramid IMHO, and I would highly recommend ESVO as a brand, available via Camping Travel Store
They have a tent display including ESVO, De Waard, Cabanon and Karsten which is, IMHO, the ultimate inflatable tent in cotton canvas.
DK 
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02/4/2024 at 2:44pm
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Virsec I consider using humans as acting tent pegs is cheating, how do they sleep at night or use the facilities without the tent blowing away?
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03/4/2024 at 10:25am
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It will be summer in a few weeks, hopefully last nights storm will be the last for a while
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03/4/2024 at 11:11am
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We always used a bungee hook between the tent peg ( a Delta) and the guy rope.
This gave an element of flexibility when heavy gusts of wind hit the tent.
Camping in France at Tonnerre (appropriately) the wind and hail was strong enough to topple a heavy Pennine trailer tent and to flatten other tents.However we remained rock solid and extremely smug
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03/4/2024 at 1:31pm
Location: South Cumbria
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I find foam earplugs useful in extreme weather.
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via mobile 30/3/2024 at 8:03pm
