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hello and welcome - i am a new camper and have two kids also- 7years and 15 months we have a saffari 6 - royal burden it has two bedrooms and can sleep six people the bedrooms are big enough for one double deb and a single bed depending on the type of beds you use. it is our hope that this will be satisfactory !!!

the other bedroom will be used for storage - clothes etc and the lving space is massive so big in fact that we have two blow up sofas, there is also a large extension type canopy- which is still part of the tent !! which we intend to do all our cokking in. e got the tent really cheap in a local camping shop but havent had chance to put it up yet so actually am not sure how it will stand once up but fingers crossed anyway.

good luck

foxy

Hi David

I went through the same scenario last yer. I have 2 boys 12yrs & 8yrs and decided to take them camping - the old "scout" never leaves you.....

Anyway, as a surprise to my wife I bought a 6 man tent at Makro - good size and I could stand up in it - it was a footpath tent and cost around £80. We had a few weekends camping - but towards the end of the season the tent started getting problems - guy anchor pounts snapping, zips becoming sticky etc. So we decided on a new tent - did lots of research (particularly on this site) and eventually bought a GELERT LOKON VARIO 5 for £150 from Buckscamping & sold the old tent.

I must say we were so impressed with the new GELERT.

Also last year I bought a Pro Action tent at Argos for the children - so they could camp in the back garden - again paid about £40 - and yes we had problems with the zip on the door so toook it back to Argos and got a refund. To replace the boys tent I bought a GELERT CADIZ 5 - quality of the GELERTS is excellent. We now use the LV5 for 2 nights and above and the CADIZ for one nighters.

Only advice I can really give is don't buy cheap - if your family does like camping it won't be too long before you will want a better quality tent. There ale lots of makes around and this forum will give you all the info you need - but for my money the GELERTS are brilliant.

Good luck & Happy Camping

Les 

Hey The Inquirer i was excactly like you, i wanted to get into camping and got out the faithfull bible (the argos book).  After finding out a bit more about different tents and what the terms meant i soon realised that the tents in Argos aren't that good, for instance all of the family tents have a HH (the level of water proofing, the higher the better) of 2000mm most people on here wont buy a tent unless its HH is atleast 3000mm. 

I have recently purchased a Campus Harvard Deluxe tent, it has 2 bedrooms (one sleeping bit sleeps 5 and the other sleeping bit sleeps 2), in between the 2 sleeping parts is a living area, this tent is over 6ft high so you'll have no problem standing up in it.  The tent cost me £120.

Campus do a good range of tents that would be ideal for you and your family.

It all depends on what your budget is, look around as there are plenty of different makes and models of tents out there.

Dave

here is a link to Buckscamping - good service in my experience, and good prices!

http://www.buckscamping.co.uk/results.php?prod_sub_catID=66

Les

Hi Inquirer and welcome to UKCS.

Consider looking at tents were the bedroom can be either one big bedroom or two smaller ones, when a divider is dropped.   Our Kos 6 had this arrangement.  With young children its far better than crawling about at 2 am when one of the little ones want you.  (Usually for a wee wee.)   The advantage of this arrangement is that as the kids get older the curtain can be dropped turning it into two separate rooms.

Hi, there.

I had the same concerns and a few more. Started on the first camp trip last year with wife 3 yrs and 12 mnth old.

As previous posters have  mentioned, don;t buy cheap.

1. I wanted all to sleep together intially, with the ability to separate as they got older.

2. Also wanted to it to be spacious , airy and easy to setup.

3. A good price.

After a lot of searching I fianlly settled on the Aztec Sala 6. It's a brilliant tent, although needs 1.5 persons to setup the tent in 30-45 mins. It states it sleeps 6. Believe me it can.

It is airy with lots of windows and openings. It has 2 main compartments. I for sleeping, and 1 for the main living area. Both areas were important:

Sleeping: THe good thing about this is that the sleeping/inner compartment has 3 doors and 2 internal dividers. That means you can have the following compartments

• 1 ( 6 man space, sleeps all)
• 2 ( 3 man space each, 1 for the kids and 1 for wou with plenty of space per compartment
• 3 (2 man space each...I plan to keep the middled one as a buffer/storage space, just in case the wife needs a bit of "warming up", as it provides a level of privacy

It has is wuite tall and at 5'8" I was able to stand comfortably when changing.

Front Area: Loads of light windows, zips and openings. Good size area that provides ample kitchen, eating, living and play area ( for when it's raining).

What else:Its ventilates so no clammy interiors in the mornings. It's 18 kgs, but comes with a lifetime gurantee. I bought mine from outdoorfocus. the Sala 6 seems to have been discountinued but there seems to be a similar one called Viento (slightly tapered I think)

I've posted a few links that I kept when I did my reasearch. The "google cache still works on one of these"

http://www.outriggers-camping.co.uk/camping/dome/aztec03.htm

http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/eshop/Aztec-Sala-6.html

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:g7xPmO15bEgJ:www.camping-supplies-uk.com/tents/aztec/aztec-sala03.htm+Aztec+Sala+6+tent&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.outdoorfocus.co.uk/chart.htm

Keep up with the camping. My kids loved it and we're basing our main holidays around camping this year

Check out gelert lokon vario 5 before buying anything else