We have just spent a terrific month hiking and camping in Sweden and have some tips to share about a new friend we made called Hilly.
Hilly is actually a Hilleberg Anjan 2 tent which we bought in Gothenburg after British Airways managed to lose one of our rucksacks. Hilly is Tardis like in spaciousness and his waterproofness in very heavy downpours more than compensates his relative chubbiness (1.5kg). Once mastered, Hilly pitches easily, even in moderately strong winds with the camming adjusters on its guylines.
Our first lesson to share is read the instructions, or better still watch an on-line video, on how to pitch the tent instead of leaving it until 10pm when you back from the pub. Added to this we pitched under a tree which during the night was fine but the following day when we returned from hiking it was covered in sap.
Luckily, the store where we had purchased all of our new kit, Naturkompaniet, was still close at hand and we returned asking if they could help wash the tent and re-proof it. Now I know we had spent a lot with them, needing everything except boots, but we didn’t expect them to replace the tent for a new one. Everyone we encountered in Sweden goes out of their way to help you – Emma’s writing a trip report we will post later.
Bertil at Naturkompaniet stressed the importance of using all of the guylines when pitching the tent as they are designed to give it maxim strength and his advice was spot on when in some very high winds the stability of the tent was brilliant.
Our old/lost tent was a North face which we had always thought good, until meeting Hilly, but our biggest problem with the north face was condensation, even when all of its ventilation flaps were open, this is the best way to reduce condensation which all tents suffer from to a great or lessor extent. We learned to pitch Hilly facing downwind, not only did this mean that the wind passed over the tent like water over the hull of a ship, it also allowed a through-flow of air and through the vents and the condensation was never very high.
A feature we would have never sought on a tent before, yet when we were wild camping came in really useful were the reflective strips on the tent making it so easy to relocate at night in your head torch.
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