Question:
Hi, just bought and used a Gelert Solo tent, it was too small! i like to keep my rucksack were possible in my tent. Any suggestions for a lightweight, one-man tent not too expensive?

Answer:
Hi there,

The name is Gear, Richard 'Lightweight Camping' Gear. As you've discovered, many lightweight one-person tents are as minimalist as possible to slash weight and this often means that there's insufficient room to stow a pack inside the tent with you – bad news for convenience when accessing kit, but also a pain if it rains during the night and your pack gets soaked.

I'm not going to suggest a specific tent initally – the problem is that most good lighweights are expensive – but I'm going too suggest that you think laterally. Next step up from solo tents is a two-person tent that in reality is more of a one-and-a-half person tent – fine for minimalist adventure racing types but a tight and very sociable squeeze for general use.

However, the interesting bit is that these snug two-person tents only weigh slightly more than the one-person equivalent, which makes them a good buy for someone looking for a roomy one-person shelter.

For example, a Vango Force Ten Helium 100, single-person tent has a claimed total weight of 1.15 kilos, while the larger Helium 200 weighs just 200 grammes more at 1.3kg. The Superlite versions of the tents weigh in at 0.98kg and 1.14kg respectively, so if you're prepared to spend a little more, you can actually have a two-person tent that weighs the same as the standard one-person version. Look around on line and you can often find big reductions.