How cheap is too cheap? Tesco Value Tent

€19.99

So you bought the Tesco Tent. Where’d you take it?

I used my tent at Electric Picnic. Myself and Féabha (my tenting buddy) were chuffed at how quickly and easily our Tesco tent was erected. Despite a few slight problems in the early stages (it didn’t come with any pegs so we had to “borrow” a few and then one of the guy ropes snapped) it all ran pretty smoothly. The lack of guy rope and ill-fitting pegs didn’t bother us during the day and we looked on smugly as the rest of our group struggled with their expensive Halfords tent and its web of ropes and poles! However,that night as we lay wet and shivering we began to experience the downfalls of a Tesco tent.

That doesn’t sound too promising. What happened?

Firstly our stray guy rope flapped in the wind, whipping any poor unfortunate who happened to be standing outside our tent which we had now realised was not waterproof. There was a pool of mingin’, mucky rain water at the front of the tent where the door was because instead of having a zip to close it at the bottom we had Velcro which obviously wasn’t all too hot at staying closed in the wind and also instead of being a double layered tent (which most expensive fancy tents are) Tesco’s finest is a single layer which means the water leaks through so you have a constant fine mist of wetness inside with the occasional drop on your face which combine to make a soggy sleeping bag and soggy EP campers.

Would you recommend to a friend?

Definitely not! Tesco tents aren’t really tents at all, more sheets of non-waterproof tarpaulin. They don’t have pegs to secure them to the ground and the guy ropes break so they may fly away at any given moment. They are not, I repeat are NOT, waterproof. Not an attribute one looks for in a tent. So while EP was fantastic, the tent was not and I found myself wishing I’d spent that little bit extra.