Cheap Tent And Festival Survival

Taking a cheap tent away with you to a festival weekend is ideal.   Why would you need anything more expensive?  You know you’re going to be surrounded by party animals.   What are the chances of you salvaging the remains of your tent afterwards?

Festivals, such as Glastonbury, Reading and Isle of Wight, are fun.   You can go there and have the time of your life.   Throughout the years these festivals have grown more and more popular, and the number of people going has risen dramatically.   This also means a rise in tent numbers out in that field.   With the numbers sometimes nearing 100,000, it can be quite cosy out on that pitch.  

This is why a cheap tent is perfect to take with you.   Imagine if all those 100,000 people get drunk.   They’ll be stumbling around all day and night.   They’ll be tripping over guy ropes, falling into tents, ripping the material and snapping poles.   But you’ll also be part of the drunken crowd, and you won’t care.   You’ll just prop it back up again and bodge a repair so that it sees you through the rest of the weekend.   You may even ruin a few tents yourself by diving onto them.   Then come the day you have to go home, you’ll stand back and take one look at your tent.   Now it’s decision time.   Is this tent worth salvaging?

It all depends on how much damage it has sustained.   If there’s hardly any, then great.   Pack it away, take it home and use it again.   If there’s a lot, then it’s down to you to decide whether you can fix it.   If you can salvage what you have – maybe with the need of buying another pole or two, or gluing some of the fabric together again – then do it.   It can quite easily be used for your next festival, and if it gets trashed there even more, then you haven’t wasted any money.   But, however, if it is completely destroyed and still has the person who dived on it lying there, you may as well say goodbye to it.    

Most people leave their tents there.   They purchase a cheap tent, expecting to only use it once, and then abandon it.   For some, even the thought of dismantling it and packing it back in its bag is enough to make them want to leave it.   If your tent is still in good condition, then this is fine to do.   After a festival, most of these are collected and taken for charity, but if your tent is ruined and useless, then it won’t be going anywhere but the bin.   In these cases, do the right thing.   Take it back with you.   Dump it when you get home.   Leaving a useless tent behind is the same as leaving all your rubbish.   It’s bad for the environment and creates a hell of a job for someone to clean up.       

Knowing what you’re getting your tent into, that there’s a high chance it won’t make it out of the festival alive and in once piece, would you spend a fortune on it?  No.   It will be money down the drain.   The best thing to do is invest in a cheap tent.   They’re just as good as any expensive one.