Just bought Soulpad 5000-Hybrid canvas tent!

[poppyboo]

After seriously considering several tents (Bear Lake 6, Decathlon Quechua) we finally fell in love with this canvas tent. And it only takes 15 minutes to pitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's huge!
Here is what we have just bought: soulpad.co.uk/sanctuary/component/page,shop.product_details/flypage,shop.flypage/product_id,195/cate goryid,40/manufacturerid,0/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,43/

We know some campsite don't like bell/tipi style tents but we prefer to go to quiet basic sites so hoping this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

When the kids get older we can even have a stove inside with a chimney flue coming out the top. I can't wait to go camping now

don't know what happened...it only has quarter of my message and has created conversation 3 X

saw the rest of my message after massive gap!
Hopefully someone will delete my other two posts!

Why don't some campsites like bell tents?

We've got that one and it's brilliant Happy camping!

I'm sure i've seen on here that it is because of their size? myabe i'm wrong...

rastababi i'm very very excited about it! It's beautiful!

Poppyboo, I'm sure you won't have a problem with it. We camped at Blackberry Wood last weekend, and although they normally have only tiny spots, they did have a couple of huge clearings for bigger tents. We camped with friends and between us we had a 4m bell, a huge awning, and a Vango Icarus, and it was fine. (They offered us 2 pitches, but we wanted to be together.)

We also do basic sites and nowhere we've been would have had a problem with a 5m bell.

We've had ours for a few years and we've never had any problems with it on any campsites. These days so many of the modern tents are similar size (if not bigger!) so it's not an issue as far as I know.

We've got the inner tent for ours too (the bedroom department). It's brill!

ooo enjoy.
We've got a 5m soulpad lite and love it.
We've not had a problem at any sites we've been to so far, in fact many family tents have a way bigger footprint (especially those trailer ones).

I'm so glad to hear you've had no problems with the size of the tent and campsites

that is a thing of beauty! does it really only have one pole?

apparently cereal! To put it up, you lay the groundsheet and tent on floor, then unzip the door a bit, crawl through with said pole, stick that up, tent goes up, put frame in door ( i guess) and then peg out.....thats whats I have read but anyone on here that owns one can correct me. 15 mins pitching time , even with reading instructions!

Missalaneous can you recoomend any basic sites? They seem a bit few and far between these days!

I only really know of sites in the South East, but we've been to Blackberry Wood a couple of times, Forgewood - where we had a field all to ourselves! - and we're booked to go to:
Welsummer and Wowo. Wowo can apparently get a bit busy, but we've got a Tipi Trail pitch booked, so hopefully it would still be nice.

Basically my requirements are:
a) Can have a campfire
b) Not packed in
c) No organised activities (I might rethink that as ds gets older, but for now I love the peace and quiet)

We have had the odd bug or two. I hang a mosquito mesh in the doorway in the evening but in the day when I've not bothered we have often had several daddy-long-legs flying about round the top of the pole.
I've not especially noticed the odd spider or ant come in from underneath.
I don't mind bugs too much anyway. (just wasps and mosquitos).

TheButterFlyEffect you do realise that with the hybrid you can either zip in the groundsheet or unzip it and rolls the walls up slightly? I went with the Hybrid b/c I wanted to keep bugs out but roll up if i needed to.

the hybrid can 'float' too and it can also be dried in two pieces (just unzip the groundsheet away from the canvas) I figured it was worth paying the extra £ (about 39.00 extra) to have the option of having groundsheet attatched/not attatched. Is the 'Lite' made of a lighter canvas in comparison to the 'Easy' and 'Hybrid'?

TheButterflyEffect I was wrong [embarrassed] i thought i could completely separate my hybrid but i have just gone and re-looked at the pics and you're right it looks like it is sewn at the door. I hope i can dry it OK! I assumed it would zip right off.....

TheButterFlyEffect who knows, maybe it can be zipped all the way off...on the images of the Soulpad 3000 Hybrid for example it does show it completely unzipped....i guess i will find out when it arrives LOL. It would be great if it did completely unzip b/c it would be easier for me to dry.

TheButterFlyEffect I am so happy for you! I am too very excited. Just been in town and bought sleeping bags and lakeland cool bag i was recommended on here so slowly getting stuff together! our tent due end of july so fingers crossed it will arrive. It's been about 5 years since we camped and that was without children

I can't wait for you to go on your first camping trip, I hope it is great for you ♥

what season sleeping bags do you and the children sleep in? I have bought a 3 season vango nitestar for me b/c I sleep cold. Do you think this will be enough or should I take cotton/fleece liner to add a extra seasons warmth incase I'm cold?
I'm thinking about getting 3 season bags for the girls incase we go camping early next spring at Easter time.