have a serious head ache please choose a tent for me

[mum2samandalex]

dh, and two ds. Firts time campers. Would like something reasonably spacious but not too expensive.Good quality and sturdy and easy to put up.

I have been researching tents. Just bought our first for a while. We went for a bell tent but had specific needs and it was expensive so would probably not suit your brief.

If we hadn't had escape concerns I would have gone for something from the Quechua 2 second range. Incredibly easy to put up and you can slowly add to it. With the base 4.2 or whatever it's called you can have space too. Quality is meant to be good.

How old are the ds's?
How many bedrooms?
What is 'not too expensive'?

Well its our first tent so was thinking of £200ish just in case we dont like it. DS's are 4 and 16mths would like an extra bit of room just for cooking etc and storage maybe.Def an sewn in ground sheet to keep the bugs out. Im not sure camping is going to be my thing tbh but seeing as ive been blessed with two boys id better get used to it lol but would like something a little bit comfy...

this one would do you.

Oh, and please don't cook in your tent, particularly with such little ones. With the one I've linked to you could cook under the poled out canopy with a windbreak around and use the front door as the 'door' iyswim

Similar sort of thing here. Outwell is a well respected brand.

Another one here

This one would mean you could all sleep together now, but have a separate romm for the ds's as they get older. (And it's got a free carpet).

This is huge, but you and dh would probably have to sleep seperately for now with a child each.

Personally, I would go for tent for 6 plus people if there are 4 of you and you want space.
We have the Gelert Horizon 8 which has loads of room and enough bedrooms for a dressing room . There are loads of tents that are a similar style to this though, have a good look on the Go Outdoors website as they do a version (not sure on prices though)
I think one of the links above is to Go Outdoors.
Oh and i agree don't cook inside your tent, we have a canopy for this but there are other options.

thank you for the replies and the advice lol will have a closer look at these tents

A great deal on a gelert here

It depends on how long you are planning to camp for - we have an Outwell Montana 6 with extension which is fab for 3+ night stays, but are looking at getting the Nevada 4 or Nevada M (slightly wider) as a quicker pitch weekend tent - still big enough to pop a little table in and has lots of windows.

I was told on here (and on ukcs) that the general rule of thumb is to add 2 to the number of people staying in the tent.

however

We have a 4 man tent (for 4 of us) and it fits us all perfectly fine. We sleep on air mats and there is room between each to walk. The footprint size of the tent is 3x4m which is miniscule comapred with a lot of tents available today but in all seriousness we have camped perfectly comfortably and happily for week+ trips without yearning for something bigger.

It would be nice to fit a table and chairs inside but it is not essential. We can all sit on chairs in the porch area and there is space for the dds to sit at their little table.

I do ponder sometimes upon the assumption that bigger is better. As omdb often says surely when you go camping the plan is to be outdoors more than sat in the tent. I know the British weather is often piss poor but we managed fine sat on our rugs in our relatively smallish tent.

Just my musings. I am very much with the horses for courses wrt to tent choices

In some cases I would have to agree Slubber (if I may call you that), but it does depend on the tent design a bit doesn't it?

I mean our Montana is supposed to sleep 6, but in reality you aren't going to have 3 people in each one of the bedrooms, because families are mostly 2 adults and however many children (although I do realise there are many exceptions to this sweeping statement), so in the Monty's case I would definitely say it falls in the +2 rule for 4 people.

Like I said we are also looking at 4/5 man tents now as we just want something quick and easy to put up - lots of living space is nice, but we don't want to be spending hours setting everything up when we are only away for a couple of days!

Indeed, indeed the tent design is really important when it comes to size. We were given a pretty big vis-a-vis tent by some friends and although it was lovely and spacious having the 2 beds at either end was a nightmare wrt little ones waking in the night. DH and I had to sleep apart [still traumatised]

I don't think there is such a thing as the perfect tent, there are always going to be compromises whatever your budget.

This is very much mvho but if you go to a display the 'family' tents seem to be getting bigger and bigger (with the subtle message that you will have a better holiday if you have a mahoosive tent). There is of course the big down side of pack size and pitching/striking time but I also wonder if there are compromises being made on quality and robustness at the expense of having a large living area.

We don't seem to have had any major dire weather this year but you only have to look at some of the threads on ukcs over the last couple of years to know that the shite-house weather (mainly WIND) can wreak havok on some of the large family dome tents, ruin a holiday and in some cases cause families to stop camping altogether

dear oh dear, you can see I have a ukcs lurkers addict badge.

Of COURSE you can call me slubber

Slubber have you ever dared to post on ukcs?

I fear laughted and have never tried though agree it is a veritable goldmine for lurking.

Oh I have indeed although I still only have one gold tent. It's very informative over there, you ask a question and you get terribly direct sensible answers. There isn't the love there that you get on here though and the endless quoting of other peoples posts drives me CRAZY.

2 years ago I gave up mn for lent and spent the whole bleeding time lurking on ukcs which culminated in me accidentally and secretly buying a not very cheap tent and hiding it from Dh for several weeks under the bed ooops.