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Quote: Originally posted by Liddenham on 20/1/2007

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The other difference is that the Bear Lake has alloy poles; strength without excessive weight, whilst the Vermont L has steel. I am presuming that this will make pitching a bit easier, but would like to hear what anyone else has to say on that....

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Best of luck with whatever you decide.

 

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That weight reduction on the poles will be welcome when hoisting the added weight of the Polycotton.

Thanks for your comments.

We took our Vermont L  for it's maiden voyage at Easter. After the inital pitching problems (see previous thread), it was very easy to put up by myself and hubby whilst trying to entertain a 5 year old ! and this is only our third ever camping trip so we are still new to all this. As you say the only problem we came across was opening the front up as it did jut out into the road. Having said this if the people opposite and next to us had pitched  with a bit more thought we could have done it (did on the first day), added to which the area of the site we were on was very narrow and really conuld have done with the pitches at alternate intervals.

This aside you can easily do as we did and and fold the front back ontop of itself to open it up. Had no problem cooking. The living area was lovely and light and has door each side. Another bonus was that we could put the heater on in the living area  to warm it up. Zipping the inner door meant you could keep the heat in a v.big plus at Easter.

I have noticed that the c&cc site at Devizes state that they cannot accomodate a tent of this size whixh surprises me as you do get bigger tents. I was going to ring and speak to them rather than just relying on what the website says.

I looked at the Bear Lake last season.  These were my reasons for not getting one and for getting the Vermont instead.

The Bear Lake is for people that want to keep a tent for a long time.  We tend to change ours every year as new designs come out and family size adjusts etc.

The Vermont has an excellent porch that is almost the size of an Oklahoma ( in-fact a bit wider ).  This means we only pitch and strike one tent.

The Bear Lake was extremely dark inside on every viewing of it we had.

The Bear Lake was a lot more expensive.

Both took about the same amount of time to pitch.

When size is considered you have to remember that with a tent and a daytent it is just as big.  A Montana 6, 12 is 4.2 metres wide.  If you add a day tent next to it, that makes it 7.20 metres wide. Remember that there will be 2 sets of guy ropes so the extra set adds another 1-2m onto the space making it 8-9m wide. All-in-all, the 2 together are wider than a Vermont L or XL is long.

My friends have just bought a vermont L we put it up in our street to try it out yesterday , amazing bit of kit

i took a load of photographs freom start to finish you can find them HERE

Make sure you start on page three i uploaded them the wrong way round so putting it starts on page three work back to see everyone getting it back in the bag lol

Quote: Originally posted by langleys on 19/4/2007

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The Vermont has an excellent porch that is almost the size of an Oklahoma ( in-fact a bit wider ).  This means we only pitch and strike one tent.....

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Agreed, but the Vermont takes no longer than a Montana to do either so the Oklahoma sized porch being errected and taken down is at no extra expense of time and energy.

The only advantages of a seperate daytent ( and there are some big ones ), is that if you cook in the porch and it gets ruined, then you can just replace the day tent and not the whole tent.  Also, if you have a smaller pitch, you can leave the day tent off so that the tent will fit.

Quote: Originally posted by langleys on 22/4/2007

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Agreed, but the Vermont takes no longer than a Montana to do either so the Oklahoma sized porch being errected and taken down is at no extra expense of time and energy.

....advantages of a seperate daytent ( and there are some big ones ), is that if you cook in the porch and it gets ruined, then you can just replace the day tent and not the whole tent.  Also, if you have a smaller pitch, you can leave the day tent off so that the tent will fit.

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Good point about the pitching time(s).

The other advantages you mention re having a separate cooking tent are quite big, as you say. We were looking at a Cabanon Biscaya yesterday which was quite lovely, and so lovely you would never ever want to cook inside it! And I guess most people would rather risk trashing a cheap kitchen tent/day room than their main tent. MT