Following on from my earlier post, I am glad to report a resounding success! I found a used Royal La Rochelle 4 on Preloved that was being sold for £45 by someone in the town where I live - serendipity at work there!
It's in great condition and exactly what I was looking for, plus reviews seem very good. My only issue is that the ground sheet in the living area isn't sewn in, so if I end up spending the long weekend in downpours I'm going to be in serious trouble - I need the living area to get dressed and things (fibro mobility issues) which will be impossible if it's sodden.
So my question is, does anyone have any tips and tricks for weatherproofing the groundsheet? I can't afford to buy a bathtub groundsheet, but modding the existing one may not be beyond my capabilities.
------------- "Any experiment of interest in life will be carried out at your own expense..." - The Libertine
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I used to have a Sunncamp Bravo 4 which is exactly like this tent, with loose groundsheet for the living area. There probably isn't enough fabric in the sheet to modify it and make it bathtub shaped, and that would alter the position of its attachment to the inner side ( usually some kind of clip that attaches to a plastic D ring on the webbing at the feet of the poles. A simple solution ( but not one I would use now as we are cutting down on disposable plastic in our lives) is to use those plastic sheets sold for decorating, which we laid out first and pitched the tent on. It can be pulled up around the edge of the groundsheet to provide a further barrier: we survived several swampy festivals like this.
A more permanent fix would be to make a replacement GS out of tarp. I did this once and cut it to fit the full footprint so that the underside of the bedroom was protected too. I cut it big enough to have a bathtub style edge around it, I cut V slots where it needed to split around the poles/ webbing, and sewed Velcro tabs onto those points to fasten around the poles. You can get cheap tarp off eBay.