Well, we survived a week on the isle of Wight - on top of a cliff facing south in a tent with no ehu. Was a bit challenging!
Monday night it was -2C. Horridly cold. We survived by first going to pub. then had layering system:
airbed
campmat
blanket
sleeping bag with fleece inner.
Hot water bottle.
Human with long sleeve top, jumper, cardi, bed socks, hat.
blanket.
towel.
coat.
With all that we were toasty warm
Had a great time. But then thursday night it started to get windy. New gelert with steel poles and delta pegs. It was noisy but it didnt shift. Not much sleep though.
Friday though....
Fri night, first we rescued a fellow campers tent that had half collapsed and was starting to rip. We fully collapsed it for them and weighted it down. We did this while being watched by smug someone in a caravan
Then went to pub. Our tent looked good. Came back. tent still ok but was bowing scarily and making horrid creaky sounds. We packed up ready for emergency decamp. We put dd in middle of tent to keep her safer. Then watched and listented to tent creak and strain and wack me in the face.
drift off to sleep.
12:30am. Astonishing loud rainy noise which turned out to be large sized hail. Long long rumble of thunder. Then flash of lightning. Within 15 secs we were all in the car wibbling. Far too exposed to be on top of a cliff in a thunderstorm. Our poor tent was doing things no tent should ever do. No more lightning so after half an hour we got back in tent after re securing it.
3:30 am I was scared the way the tent was moving. Elastics for pegs were snapping. Delta pegs for guy ropes still ok. Without them tent would have been gone. I went down the 200m to laundry room to check that it was open for us to shove dd in if we needed to. Other tents on site were coming apart. I stared at walls of tent ready to grab dd and run if necessary.
5:50am. Get up. Find poor neighbours have been in car all night. Their tent collapsed during the storm. everything wet. Only reason tent didnt fly away was down to the delta pegs we had lent them. They'd had to spend part of the storm just holding down their tent.
As for our poor new tent - steel poles bent out of shape. flysheet worn away in places due to rubbing. Elastics gone. But we survived and so did it sort of.
So. Any hints on tent repair before our next trip?