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Ok we have now got our first tent, as it was a lovely dry day today we decided to put it up to make sure it was ok, before we use it for real, now we did this (in quite good time actually) and once we checked it we decided to dimantle it again, so come on how on earth do you get it back in the blooming bag????

at the moment it is sitting on our dinning room floor in what you could say is folded, but not nearly enough

help

Well, if my memory serves me correctly, that's a dome tent with two bedroom pods and a porch which pitches inner first and has a seperate flysheet.  if that is the case my advice would be as follows:

To fold Flysheet - Lay flysheet out as flat as possible.  Fold bedroom pods and porch section in towards the middle of the tent.  Fold in thirds (side to side) and then in half length ways.  The flysheet should now be in a long oblong shape which is roughly the width of the bag.  At this point it is probably best to start folding the tent from one end, starting with a fold about 1/2 the depth of the bag so that whent he folding is complete it is around the same depth as the bag itself.

To fold the inner tent - lay inner tent out as flat as possible with the extra fabric which forms the dome folded over itself, side to side, so that it lays flat.  Fold bedroom pods into the centre of the tent and repeat fold from this point as per above.

Hopefully this shuold fit back into your bag providig you have got all the air our of the flysheet and inners as you were folding.

Ah, the age old problem. Manufacturers are getting better nowadays than they once were, with some of the modern case-style bags being easier to get the lot back into, but it's always been a case of the bag being not exactly over generous. With a new tent it can sometimes feel like at the factory they use a machine to pack it far tighter than you could ever hope to do it by hand !

It's just trial & error - eventually you'll find a way of packing it tightly enough to get it in. When you get the tent down to within a few folds of the right size, measure the bag against the folded tent before you make the final few folds. Try & work out a few folds ahead just how small you're going to have to get it. Practise makes perfect - eventually you'll work out how it has to be done & you'll wonder what the problem was. Mind you, even after years of doing it sometimes you only have to fold it slightly differently one time and suddenly it no longer seems to fit.....

There's no way we'll ever get our tent back in the bag.

If I thought it wouldnt damage the tent I;d have a go with one of those vacuum cleaner bag things that suck all the air out! I just wondxer if the tent would ever go back up afterwards! LOL

• Remove poles and pegs
• lay fly sheet flat but double
• fold in corners to make rectangle
• fold both ends into the middle like wardrobe doors
• fold in half lengthways if it is very wide-along the 'door' opening
• fold this rectangle in 3 or wardrobe and in half again if wide
• repeat with inner tent(s)
• place inner over outer (put poles and pegs in the middle of this if they go in the same bag)
• roll like a swiss roll sitting on it every now and then to expel the air.
• unroll and then roll a little tighter and pull bag over slowly

This system works on everything from my parent's frame tent to my sister's 10 berth tunnel to my backpacking tunnel, ridge and dome!