You can't really sleep in there....can you?

Yes, that was the idea when we started. It is, though, mighty cramped and not something you'd want to be doing very often, which is probably what really makes Daphne not a "motor caravan" by most people's definition. It works for  a solo traveller, especially if the environment is a bit hostile. Like, with bugs of the Midgie variety. But even in an emergency - or a quick 40 winks on a long journey - it requires some patience to make it work. Stuff has to be moved out of the way before the beds can be sorted out and if 2 people are involved this generally means some comedy in such a confined space. Cosy, though.


Clearly, accommodation options need to be assessed for comfort and practicality too, and since we'
ve both done plenty of backpacking we're used to ground tents, their advantages and otherwise. With the ability to carry something a little larger than a Pup tent (that gives our age away, right?) we looked at the options, and there are a lot:


1. Standard touring tents.

"It's your turn to fill the waterbed".

Either backpacking tents on steroids or full blown "family" tents with party rooms, 2 bathrooms and fully fitted kitchens. Probably OK for a base camp but a bit of a chore to take apart and then reassemble every day.

2.  "Quick-Pitch"/Pop-Up/festival tents.

Are you serious? Well these are actually quite useful in that they give you somewhere to store outdoor/wet gear and stuff you don't need inside the truck. Quite a good idea on kayaking trips to keep all that salty kit separate and away from any metal. We bought one for this reason but as somewhere to live/sleep....nah. However...it did come in useful later when we experimented with other options.





3. Expedition tents.

Various styles ranging from teepees in ripstop nylon to original canvas bell tents complete with stoves and reindeer-skin carpets. Mike helped to put up a teepee-style tent on a kayaking trip and while it gave plenty of space it took 20 minutes just to get it up. Without several people working at it this would be quite a challenge in bad weather. We quite liked the Oz-tent design, though, and put it on our shortlist for another look once we'd explored...

...4. Roof-Top Tents, or RTTs as I believe they're called.

We quite liked the idea of sleeping on the first floor, so to speak, but were a bit put off by the weight of these things - in excess of 60kgs,some of them - and the load rating of the Defender roof gutters is supposedly 75kgs in total. Given that the steel rack probably accounted for about a third of that we were going to be over the limit on the design spec. There's probably a healthy safety margin factored into that figure, but we couldn't find anyone who'd admit to what it might be. And the weight of gold one would take from the purse...Hannibal tent, sir? Or second mortgage? On top of that (no pun intended) there was the taking up of essential kayak-carrying space on the roofrack. Initially we discounted RTTs, but our interest in a Moroccan trip changed our minds later.

5. "Annex"-type tents that use the Defender's body as part of the support.

There are several of these around and they looked quite cleverly designed. Some could be used on their own while others wouldn't stand up without being attached to the vehicle.

Military surplus 9x9

This would preclude them being left in-situ while the vehicle left the site for a while, if only to get the groceries. All of them had the feel of a "lash-up" although most had been cleverly thought out and would be adequate for the occasional outing or for a wet weather shelter at the beach. We didn't feel that they'd be substantial enough for our needs.The military solution is the "9x9" (feet square) tent with a roll-up side into which the vehicle is shoved. Mike's experience of these has been good, but they are very heavy and awkward for 2 people to put up and dismantle if one of them isn't 6 feet tall!

6. Awnings and add-on side panels (to make a "room").

 We'd already made an awning -which was really no more than a sunshade - and thought about adding some side panels to make a sleeping area. Advantages? Quick-pitch, self contained. But...still dependent on the vehicle for support, can't be "de-coupled" for the day trip from the site. To be properly weather and bug-proof it would need to be a more substantial structure than we could achieve with the materials and tools we had and the more substantial it became the less "quick pitch" it would be.We'd need to buy something "proper". Which equals expensive and heavy and not what we'd want to do for an experimental solution.

Here's our homemade awning:

The poles and guys are for the Oz-tent, not the awning.

 It's really no more than 2 pieces of 12mm ply suitably stiffened and attached to the rack using farm gate hinges. The cover is shower curtain material. Since this is very light we reckoned the awning would be self-supporting on the heavy hinges and not need any vertical supports. This was correct. We originally made the cover removable using turnbuckles, but we realised that it'd roll up and stow quite well so it could be left in place.

 

However, the lightweight material had a major drawback; it wasn't strong enough nor taut enough to resist the "pooling" of rain, so any time there was any wet weather we'd be pushing bulges of water out of it - with all the accompanying splashes, mud, puddles etc. We tried to tighten it by using a telescopic "spreader bar" between the side arms which helped a bit but not enough as there's too much stretch in the material to let water run off quickly. You can see, though, that the height of the Defender married up well with the height of the Oz-tent, a benefit we made use of later.


All this prompted us to sit down and assess what we needed and how we would use it. Base Camp or Touring? Flat, grassy terrain or rocks? Quick pitch? Storm proof? Bug proof? Standing room or get-dressed-on-your-back? Camp beds or mats? Sleep double or single? Crawlycreature proof? The list is potentially endless, which probably explains why there are so many options available. Everyone will have a different set of priorities on their wishlist. We reckon this is a Good Thing; if nothing else it keeps the market interesting and the choices wide.

So, winding the clock back a bit, the initial requirement back in 2010 was for a Base Camp system.  Daphne would be used, once the destination was reached, for carrying boats and people to and from a launch point and returning to the Beer Fridge by sunset. This would be on a "proper" campsite hence flat, grassy and immune from most ground-based predators. If we were touring in Continental Europe the tent would need to be reasonably easily (read quickly) pitched and packed since we'd probably be moving every other day if not more often but using established sites which would be Flat and Grassy. There would be a need to leave the tent on-site for some of the time.


At the time, these criteria ruled out the RTT. Even though these are "quick set-up", if you intend to return to the same site in the evening your "pitch" won't be reserved by the presence of your tent, so you run the risk of getting the last space - if you're lucky - which will inevitably be next to the chemical loo disposal or the discobar. For the same reason the Awning combination wouldn't work and neither would most of the Annex-type designs since they need the vehicle to hold them up. Festival or "pop-up" tents are too basic and cramped but might be useful as a marker to reserve our pitch if we decided on a vehicle-attached option in future. Family tents take too long to set up and pack up, not to mention being generally bulky and far too well-appointed for what we need although some of the teepee designs were attractive in some ways. Military surplus with modifications = heavy and difficult to manage for the two of us. This left us looking at the likes of the Oz-tent. Heavy duty, well made but expensive. Very quick to pitch and strike. Flexible in their use in that they can be pitched alongside the vehicle but "connected" to it. Good reviews but mainly from those who are travelling the Simpson Desert or Namibia, not The Outer Hebrides or France. Would this be overkill?

Our visit to Adventure Overland provided the chance to look at the options in detail. We went, we saw, we felt the quality and measured the width. We climbed in, crawled under, looked over, smelled, scrutinised, hummed, hah-ed and haggled. And we bought an Oz-tent, the RV-3 model for a bit of extra space. With the bits that go on the side. It looks like this:

Once the Defender is set up alongside, it can look like this:

or like this:

or this:

The sales blurb claims this tent can be pitched in 30 seconds. This is no lie. In fact from putting the parking brake on, Mike could have the tent off the rack, set up and beds ready before the kettle had boiled. The side panels took a little longer to attach as these zip on. The zips are good quality, heavy duty things but we did manage to have one break on us soon after we started using it. The supplier replaced it for free. Getting the panels aligned to do the zips up can be awkward and although it can be done solo, 2 people make the job a lot easier as the panels are quite awkward to manipulate, especially in a wind.



The extra shelter they give under those conditions is worth it. Set up as in the picture it is exactly the right height to allow the back or side of our Defender to be completely enclosed, similar to the "Annex" tents, but without needing to be attached. Note that if you fit your Landy with beefy lifted suspension this may not work so well.

We found the interior just long enough - front to back - to allow us to fit 2 camp beds in although they touched the walls at each end. We also experimented with thick sleeping pads which were very comfortable but were a pain to carry since they took up so much space in the back. We like to have easy access to the "kitchen" during the day so to have to unload a lot of kit to have a brew or make lunch isn't ideal.



Other points:


1. The sewn-in groundsheet is very tough but the feet of a camp bed might challenge it on soft ground. We'd recommend padding to protect it.
2. There's plenty of ventilation and we needed to use it most of the time; that is, peg the rear window flap open and keep the top half of the side windows unzipped a bit or condensation becomes a nuisance. No worse than on other tents we've used and a flysheet might remove the problem if you can afford one- and be bothered to fit it. As supplied and in a European climate the moisture tended to collect on the aluminium frame and drip onto our beds or clothes if we'd hung them up at night. It was also something which slowed us down when packing up as we'd either have to dry the inside with something or wait until the sun did the work for us. In practice we did the latter but at the end of the day when we tried to pitch while the sun was still high enough to air the tent before we set up beds.
3. It's heavy. Just about manageable for one person but to get it onto the rack is quite a heave and to avoid damage it's probably best to consider it a 2-person job. Mike did try to balance the tent on it's end against Daphne's flank and then pull it up onto the rack, but the rocking about as he climbed onto the roof sent the tent sliding sideways, nearly wiping off a door mirror.

Just as an experiment we made a frame that "plugged in" to 2 tubes tie-wrapped to the rack. With a curtain this gave us an enclosed area at the rear which was ideal for a shower room.

Like this:

When not in use the frame slid into the tubes on the rack.

It was a bit of a faff, though, to attach the curtain so we only used it a couple of times since site showers were always available. It was quite useful as a changing room after a kayaking session, though as Mike found it a bit of a challenge to get into and out of a dry suit while lying down in the back.

So, that's how we lived for 3 years of touring holidays and until we began planning our first Moroccan safari. This is when we did some -well, actually, a huge amount - of research into the country and the conditions we were likely to meet. We'd never taken Daphne off-road for more than a few hundred yards and had no real idea of what she and we were capable of. Clearly some kind of "trial run" would be needed and under the sort of conditions that if it all went wrong we'd have some kind of support on hand. With that in mind, we signed up for a tour of the back roads of the Alps with a guided group......