Do people steal tents from camp sites?

Where you planning on camping??

You can pick up quite big Vango car camping tents for £70 if you do get another. Although I am sure it happens I do reckon certain places are less likely to see tents nicked. Contents are different. I've used a lot of Lakes campsites and never had anything nicked. I don't have a TN Quasar Superlite though (not yet!!). If you are worried then a cheap tent (pehaps Argos or decathlon) might set your mind at ease. Personally I don't really worry about it.

I know someone who had their tent & contents nicked from a campsite years ago.  Whether that influences your decision or not, dunno.  Things worry folk in different ways.    It didn't influence me. 

I'd say the chances of a Desirable Tent (and I'd say anything with TN on it will fit from a "let's shift this!" point of view) going Walkies would vary a lot on where it is and when.  I'd guess a summer saturday at a honeypot site in the Lakes will have much higher chances than a wee farm site along the SW Coast Path.

Having said that, clearly lots of folks with Quasars camp at Langdale on bank holiday weekends and leave with the same tent they arrived with.

Pete.

Short answer... yes... tents and camping equipment SOMETIMES gets stolen from campsites, but MOSTLY it doesn't. If it was the other way round, campsites would be closed down within a week! It all depends on who else is mooching around the site, and how desirable your kit is. Even when no-one nicks your stuff, it doesn't stop other problems. I once watched a cow in Langdale (Bayesbrown Farm) get tangled in the guyropes of a family tent, and rip it out of the ground once panic set in!

A story from my youth... a wild camp consisting of 20 tents was said to have been lifted from Angle Tarn while the campers were on Bowfell, along with all the best bits of kit. When things happen on that scale, it involves a lot of thieves!

Crikey... I'm making Langdale sound like a no-camp area!

My preferred approach to camping in general is to pitch my tent and put my head down for the night, then pack away in the morning and move on. Less UV radiation hitting my tent, and my backpacking kit doesn't weigh a whole lot more than a day pack anyway.

My folks used to do a lot of car-camping with their old Wildcountry Hyperspace which was always left unattended in public campsites during the day. It could easily have had 40 weeks of use across Spain, France, Portugal, Cornwall and Wales. Still got it.

Metric Kate wrote (see)

Doesn't bother me, and my camping stuff's covered on my home insurance anyway.

It would be rather sad to cut a trip short because your kit got pinched, regardless of whether or not you ended up out of pocket.

if on a normal campsite with people around it shouldn't be a problem

I'm not sure how safe that assumption is.  Stealing something in plain sight is generally a matter of having the brass neck to do it.  If someone wanders on to the Langdale campsite on a bank holiday weekend and starts packing up a Quasar, how many folk will question who it belongs to?

And if there are witnesses... "oh yeah, it was a white bloke in his 30s, wearing a Berghaus jacket, a Buff (so couldn't see his hair) and jeans, he put the tent and the sleeping bag and stuff in a TNF holdall and wandered off to the car park".  So that'll be easy to sort out then...

Pete.

Serriadh wrote (see)

Metric Kate wrote (see)

Doesn't bother me, and my camping stuff's covered on my home insurance anyway.

It would be rather sad to cut a trip short because your kit got pinched, regardless of whether or not you ended up out of pocket.

Just stay at home & blather on outdoor forums - much safer!

had my tent nicked from Whitby Folk festival many years ago: in the main festival campsite, nothing valuable in it (other than my diary) and not a particualrly expensive tent.

Was covered on the insurance, but not having somewhere to sleep, or to sleep in, was an inconvinience to say the least. 

Like Kate we use M&S for insurance as they were remarkably sane about this sort of thing.  Particularly bikes, covered up to 4K with no silly extra paperwork.

On bike forums when folk ask about this there's quite a few folk like us who find not only is the policy good but a great price too, but quite a few others who get far higher quotes.  Seems to be a bit of a postcode lottery.

The Golden Rule: Read the small print carefully

Pete.