I bought a new tent and I am in LOVE!

As readers of this blog may know I like to go camping. This is a relatively recent phenomenon (the last few years or so) and I have been really embracing "going shopping" while on camp. Its nice to go around each others pitches to see what different pieces of equipment there are, how many ways are there to sit down, how many surfaces are there to put how many different drinking receptacles down and so on. "Ooh I love that chair", "How does that table work?", "That solar panel is cool, where did you get that?" 

While on the 3 Peaks in 3 Weeks trip (Link here if you'd like to read my first post on the subject), I saw a new style of tent being put up in full for the first time.  Rather traditionally, we have always had tents with poles and I'd seen these new tents before but not one being pitched from the outset. The tent that caught my eye was a massive family tent (suitable for about 8 people I think) and it was being erected by one person. Now anyone who knows tenting knows that putting up a tent for 8 people is not easy work at all, and should be a job for multiple people if you don't want to end up having a medical episode at the end of it. There's the getting it all out of the bag, setting it out, pegging it down, then putting the poles in, re-pegging because it has moved, then the guy lines all around in case a the BBC feel the sudden need to bring Michael Fish out of retirement for a redemption broadcast and get ahead of the latest hurricane. 

Well this time it was different. This time the person was able to do it almost single handedly. As I watched I got very jealous of this person and thought what a marvelous idea it could be to have a tent that I could put up by myself that was big enough for the family to camp in and not just me in my lovely solo 2 person tent. We could do weekend getaways more often because I could set up camp earlier on a Friday and the rest of the family could join after work, school etc. More family time and less "Oh just hold this and I'll do it." & "No, not that way the other way" type of aggrieved conversation. This solo superhuman could have pitched this 8 person tent completely alone done it alone but their partner was there and was assisting with the tent pegs making the whole thing very easy indeed. And that is because there were no poles on this tent at all. Let me explain. 

In my opinion, on a large family sized tent, the poles are one of the worst parts of the whole operation. Once you have them all out of the bag you need to either figure out which pieces connect to which other pieces or do a baton twirling contest with a long piece of bungee cord through the middle to assemble one long pole. Then do this again several times over until you have the right number of long black wobbly snakes. Next you have to slot them into place through a sleeve of fabric which seems designed to "catch" on to one of the metal slots (on the aforementioned bungee snakes) at every opportunity. Once you do manage to wangle them through the sleeves you have to simultaneously hold one end of the pole onto a small metal spike or into an eyelet which is determined not to hold anything still and at the same time push the other end into a similar spike or eyelet with a force reserved only for lifting Thor's hammer.  Rinse and repeat as many times as the tent requires (In our case 5). This isn't a job for 1 person to do alone, especially when you consider the tent poles on a typical family tent are in excess of 5 meters long. 

I really don't like this process and as I have yet to become Stretch Armstrong it isn't something I can do solo. So, I bought a new tent for family weekend getaways. The answer to all of this woe is simply AIR. I wanted to get an air beam tent where instead of tent poles there are tubes of air which you pump up with either a manual pump or you can buy an electronic pump if you wish. Right now I only have the manual pump but it works well and doesn't take much effort at all. You attach it to the valve on one side, pump it up to a suitable pressure, close the valve and move on to the next. Simple, no need to walk around the tent 15 times, no struggling with fiberglass or plastic poles and bungee cords, just one valve and pump and its done. 

The supplied pump also pushes air in when being pumped up AND down which is fantastic, it means that whichever way you are using it it is pushing air into the pole. Genius! (Its simple things like this which somehow fill me with joy!)

This new tent is smaller than the old one but still big enough for all of our things and a big enough area for sleep where our son feels like he has his own space. If you are new to tenting and want to go camping but are unsure how much room you actually need to not feel like you are being packed in like sardines then I would recommend my go to method on tent sizing. My simple trick is to look at the "Man" rating i.e. 2 man tent, 3 man tent, 5 man tent etc, use the number and minus 2 and that's how many will actually be comfortable and can stretch out a bit. So ours is a 5 man, but is comfortable and spacious for the 3 of us that use it.

NOT SPONSORED - If you are interested my new tent is the Outdoor Revolution Atom 500 and is currently on sale (as at July 2026) at www.outdoorworld.co.uk for £299 which is cheap for a tent of this type and size. It does have some faults and things I would like to change, but that is for a different blog coming along soon. 

For now I love it for the speed and ease with which I can pitch this tent solo and I would recommend air beams to anyone looking for a simple solution to the terror that is tent poles. 

Until Next Time 

xx