Right, what would you take to go camping with a small child and a dh and is a two-man tent just a ridiculous idea?

[Pruners]

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Two man - yikes!

Even when dh and I shed the children we still take a four man dome tent...

Best to take the biggest tent you can. Must be able to stand up in it else you will go mad esp if raining

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we did it in 3 man tent when dd1 was small, but did have porch for storage. if no car then you have to find somewhere to stash everything and presumably have no headroom or anything if it rains. depends if you'd be out all day (no matter what wheather) and just using tent for sleeping. or are with friends so can share their larger tents if need be.

not impossible, but not particularly pleasant ime.

If it were just for a night or too, and depending on the size of the tent...

I've taken my two dc in the 4 man tent (without dh) and it is fine, as long as you are out all day.

I'm thinking of our 2 man hiking tent which was small...

Thought about a cheapy vango venture on ebay maybe? they're perfectly carriable

if no car is not so much size of tent would bother me as carrying all other stuff kids tend to entail...

We've been camping with 2 toddlers, and 2 adults, in a 3 person tent. And my sister camped quite a bit with her partner and toddler in a 2 person tent - they used to go by train with it. It's Ok if the weather's good and you can sit and cook outside. We're planning to go camping across Spain with 2 small tents and 2 adults 3 children.

warm sleeping bags, small stove, good waterproof clothes so you don't get everything wet. It's perfectly possible to camp without all the paraphenalia.

but we only go if the weather forecast is good, if it's rainy we cancel.

Its doable. Think about where you used to put your bags... thats where you put the child. Bags may have to be relegated to teh porch, BUT, child isn;t same length as an adult so you may be able to keep some storeage space in the tent at night.
We ( 2 adults and a 15m/o toddler) camped and cycle toured for 10 nights with a Vaude Space 1 a 2/3 person tent ( 3 adults would be far to cramped tho). It is about 1.4 m wide, 1.9m long and in teh centre is 0.9m tall. It has a porch so anthing that didn't HAVE to be kept dry was stashed there or teh bike trailer or on the bikes. We manged to cope with 18hours straight in the tent one rainy evening- morning.

Go for it with what you have, if its tooo cramped then up grade, but you will have your own ideas about what is importan to you. Our planned upgrade will be to a slightly bigger but still rather small tent coz we want one that weighs under 4 kg. Like you- no car, weight is more important than standing room.
Have fun camping

I've slept in a 2 man tent with my 11 yo and my 7 yo but I did have a car to leave the stuff in. It was very wet and we just had room in the porch for our wellies! I wouldn't like to do it for long unless the weather was nice although we didn't get a bad night's sleep despite ds being the world's biggest fidget. We shared a double ready bed but if you are carrying stuff two sleeping bags zipped together and a couple of bed rolls? Inflatable pillows as well I should think.
Some people on the site we were on this week had a small tent but they also had one of those beach shelter type things as storage space. It was one where you could zip up the groundsheet part to close in the front and shut everything in and I'm assuming it was better material than our cheapy one which is only really gauze. I thought it was a clever idea as it packed away into a tiny bag and was easy to carry.

Dh says- if your not sure if you will fit in your current tent, go on a shake down one night trip somewhere close to civilisation, like the back garden or a friends back garden.
We went to a friends house about 10 miles from home so we tested out the full trailing and full panniered bike rigs as well as the tent.