Best Place to View Tents- inc. Bell Tents

[MorelloKisses]

Hi, I'm in the market for a family tent, and am thinking Bell Tent, but not sure.

Is there anywhere I can look at family tents in the flesh canvas?

Following.

My local GoOutdoors has a warehouse over the road from the main 'shop' just for viewing tents. Not sure they have bell tents but they do have a good range of easy (ish) large family tents. Quite fun to walk around with kids. Was surprisingly hard to write the above while avoiding excessive use of word 'erected' childish, moi?

Camping World at Horsham have a huuuuge range of tents on display, but I don't think they had any bell tents.

Nowhere has them on display near us (NW), we bought ours as a leap of faith without seeing one IRL, no regrets so far.

Just do it, you know you want to...

I do want to...

Where are you OP - I have no idea what their tents are like but Soulpad have a showroom in Norfolk - by appointment I think.

Hmmm, I'm in London...

I am really undecided between 4 and 5 m.

I think 4 as we want to use it at small festivals (where you park quite near the site, and use a trolley)....but I don't want to be disappointed on space.

Equally I don't want to get the 5 and then be a bit embarrassed about just how big my tent it!

Ideally I'd like to see them, and see other family tends to guage the space.

Btw it is for me, DP and our 18 mth old

We have an albatros as our big tent, I think it is 4.5m x 4m plus a big vario canopy. Three of us too. Even without the canopy there is plenty of room.

Consider how you will dry your tent - has to be bone dry before you pack it away. Have you got room to pitch a big tent at home? Ours often ends up pitched for days drying out.

5m will be massive for 3 of you.

Hmm. We have a garden but it is paved... So that is an issue

I'd go for a 4m in your situation, a 5m for 3 people would be overkill IMO.

(I sometimes feel a bit at how enormous our 5m is, even though with 2 adults, 4 children and a dog we couldn't get away with anything smaller!)

A bell tent with separate groundsheet (PIG or ZIG) can be dried as 2 separate parts, we've dried ours hanging over the upstairs banister all the way down to the hallway in the past dripping down the walls but hey ho, the camping is worth it.

There are quite often tent shows around the country over the summer. There's definitely going to be one in Maidstone (just off M20 from SE London). Last year they had 3 bell tents plus a myriad of other tents and equipment out. I spent many afternoons after work there...