Tag: Pop-up Tent

Snowdrops by the Pond

pond sketch view from pop-up tent10.30 a.m.: Snowdrops are at their freshest around the pond so I set up my pop-up tent and start a sketch in the gusting wind and passing showers.

Before the afternoon rain sweeps in I roll up the tent into its dustbin lid-sized bag. I can never quite work out how such as large tent fits into such a small bag but it does, in what seems to me like the most tent folderillogical and inelegant fashion. I resort to grabbing the writhing figure-of-eight coils and pushing them to the middle. I’ll try and practice with it on a regular basis until it becomes second nature.

Pitch Perfect

tent and pondThe wild is calling me and I’m back in my tent for the first time in two years.

tent flap
That rusty metal pole isn’t part of the tent; it the clothes post.

crab apple blossomAdmittedly I’ve only gone as far as our back lawn and pitched it overlooking the pond. The weather is fine and I don’t really need this little pop-up igloo of a tent but I need to practice putting it up and – the trickier part – folding it up and getting it back in its dustbin-lid sized bag

kingcupsWhen I first bought it, I was glad of it when drawing rocks on the beach at Whitby. It rained quite heavily but I was able to finish my drawing from the shelter of the tent however I could not work out how to roll/fold it up again.

cuckoo flowerThe life-guards of West Cliff, a helpful family by the Whalebone Arch, even a tattooed man who looked as if he’d be an expert at striking camp after a music festival were unable to help me and we drove home with the half-folded tent, like a restless Chinese New Year dragon, springing about in the boot.

This afternoon, for the first time ever, I folded it up in one go. The secret is not to try and understand how it folds up – that’s multi-dimensional thinking that would baffle Stephen Hawkings – you’ve just got to start rolling the naan bread-shaped collapsed tent from bottom to top and you’ll find yourself flanked by two small bicycle wheel-sized butterfly wings which you concertina into the bag, being careful to tuck in any overlapping canvas between the hoops so you don’t catch it in the zip fastening of the bag.

I look forward to using it again as I’m convinced that after six or seven years I’ve finally got the hang of it.