Those of you with a family of 5 what tent have you got-getting desperate????

[MilaMae]

Dp and I have been looking for ages and time is getting on now. We had our heart set on the Outwell Montana 6 only when we saw it at the Yeomans thing we quickly realised we couldn't fit 3 single airbeds in the kids sleeping section bit.

Soooooooo we're now looking at the Bear Lake 6(hellish expensive and canvas) or the Vermont XL. We need a good quality one which will do us for a long time. We'll be doing a lot of camping as live in Devon,can get to Cornwall quickly,the kids love it and financially it's good too

The Yeomans man said that the nylon stuff the Vermont etc are made from only really last 5 years due to UV(lot of money for only 5 years or so), also it didn't look quite as watertight as the Montana to my very untrained eye.

The Bear Lake is lovely but v expensive,is it worth it?.Will the canvas be a pita?. Also he said it would last 15 years +,we don't think it's quite big enough for when the kids get older as no storage options. What could we do then? At £799 I'd want my grankids using it to be frank.

So what to do? Are there any other brands out there that are v good quality or should we just get an el cheapo? What tent do other families of 5 fit into. Please,please advise we really are stumped

Just bought a Vango Maritsa 7 (about £400). It's perfect for us because it has 3 bedrooms, a nice big 3 berth for DH and I and then 2 x 2 berths for a boys' room and a girls' room. The 2 berths can be unzipped to make a big 4 berth area if you prefer it that way. There is a big living area and a porch that zips closed (and will be used as a kitchen). Can't tell you about quality yet as we haven't tested it.

Vango amazon 800. We have just put ours up for the first time today and its vast. 3 bedrooms, middle one which is 240cm accross. 2 on either side are 140 each. One of them zips into the middle one to create one mega size room.
Living area is enormous, you can probably play footie in it.........

They sound good. Never get to see any Vango ones up down here but they look good in the catalogue. Do you both have 3 kids?

5m Belltent.......

Dp might just leave me though if I throw one of those into the mix Mrs Wobble,saw 3 today(see other thread) which we're now agonising over

only 2 kids here, but one is 5, the other 3 and a real livewire. We borrowed a tent last year and had a wet weekend stuck in about 6ft square of living area and 2 bored kids which was absolute hell. Our main criteria for the tent this year was to be as large as we could reasonably afford! We went to Tong garden centre to see the Vango Maritsa 700 and were planning to buy it, but when we saw it in the flesh, it didnt have quite enough head room for me. The next tent along was the amazon 600 and we both really liked the big living area. Then we discovered they did a bigger model in the 800 and decided that was perfect for us.

get a caravan! honestly, camping is not about sitting inside enormous tents when it rains.

sorry that came out ruder than i meant. i think soem people make the mistake of thinking if a tent enormous enough it will be like being in a holiday cottage. it won't. you need to just be outside whatever teh weather and if it is utterly miserable go home.

so in short go for the canvas option if you are in for the long haul. you can always get bigger children their own wee tent when they out grow the family one

What Bariatric said. We have a Wolf Lake 5 (like Bear Lake), but sleep on selfinflating mats which are smaller than airbeds so fit in 3 kids no problem. When older they will be annexed in a 2-man tent or something.

It's a pita because it's big and heavy, but the experience of being inside is good - not flappy or wobbly, more like the old frame tents used to be. (In fact we bought it based on DH's childhood experience of canvas frame tent camping).

Other large families I know swear by the pod type tents - like the Outwell Hartfords I think.

Coleman are a brand worth looking at too.

We did have a tent where the fabric disintegrated due to UV but it did manage 10 years of very heavy use first.

Yes, three kids here. We have just replaced the Vango Amazon 600 so that we have 3 bedrooms.

We have 4 DC and have a Khyam XXL Classic. It's so easy to put up (one person could do it in about 15 minutes plus another 15 if you want to peg out extensively). 4 thermorests with fit in the DC's pod.

Sorry - remove final 'with' (was going to say with sleeping bags when I realised that pretty obviously there would be room on top of the thermorest - doh!). Anyway, we love our tent

Many thanks all now got it down to a VermontXL or Wolf Lake 7 but they're both sooooo big-[scared emoticon].

Having real problems viewing the Khyams,Colemans and Vangos.

Starting to feel like we're buying a house not a tent

Again I would recommend Vango, we have the Colorado DLX 800, I think the others quoted on here are updated versions of this as ours is 4 years old now. 3 bedrooms - one is for 4 people, and is very roomy, it has an optional separation sheet to hang up if boys/girls is an issue. You can get an extension for cooking and a sun extension for shade to add extra room...

They are often for sale on EBay for those people upgrading to a caravan/camper (our next move I think)...

We are a family of 6 and we have a Sunncamp Olympic XL - not made now but similar available new (or second hand on eBay which is where we got ours. 3 bedrooms, large living area, good sized porch area, full sewn in groundsheet. It's been great in all weathers.