hell bent for metal

Um, that’s us there… in the blue tent, towards the left… [photo from offi­cial WOA Gallery]

We went and picked up a new tent in the post-Christmas sales, see­ing as we left our last one pitched in a field at Wacken along with a whole stack of other stuff that we fig­ured we would no longer be need­ing. We picked up some valu­able tent-related camp­ing tips last year, but not being expe­ri­enced campers – or in fact, campers at all — we unfor­tu­nately learned these the hard way.

1. You may think, as we ini­tially did, that see­ing as you only get a cou­ple of hours sleep a night (if that), that a spa­cious and/or com­fort­able camp­ing arrange­ment is not impor­tant. On the con­trary. Because you are only get­ting a cou­ple of hours sleep a night, you want those cou­ple of hours to be as com­fort­able and rest­ful as pos­si­ble. If you spend your two pre­vi­ous hours of rest time squashed into a cor­ner won­der­ing what that lump is dig­ging into your ribs, you’re going to be very cranky when you finally do get up (at least you will if you’re me), in which case you might as well not have both­ered even attempt­ing to sleep. Metal karaoke goes until 6am and by 8am it’s far too hot to stay in the tent any­way, unless you’re unconscious.
2. A two per­son tent is big enough for two (under­sized, per­haps dwar­ven) per­sons, but not big enough for two per­sons plus two per­sons’ worth of gear. Our new tent appar­ently sleeps three. Look­ing at the addi­tional space, I think they would have to be three VERY friendly per­sons, but we should be able to get me and Dave AND our packs in there a lit­tle easier.
3. You don’t want your head to be in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion. We had a good camp­ing spot, nice and close to the grounds and facil­i­ties, but this meant that we had more foot traf­fic then we would have oth­er­wise. Stum­bling drunks + metal boots + your head on the ground near the edge + ten­dency for dudes to unzip and relieve them­selves any­where = recipe for dis­as­ter. This year, our tent is 220cmx200cm floor area (last years’ was 140cmx200cm). While the 220cm is meant to fit the three fic­tional per­sons across, we’ll be using to let Dave stretch his legs all the way out, which will hope­fully mean there’s less chance of his head get­ting stomped or uri­nated on. Which is A Good Thing.
4. On day two it rained. Which meant every­thing turned to mud. Mud + boots + tent = more of a prob­lem then you would prob­a­bly realise. We needed our boots in the tent while we were sleep­ing so they didn’t get rained on, soaked with dew or uri­nated in (the most likely of the three). But because they were cov­ered in mud we had to put them in a plas­tic bag and try to keep them upright in the cor­ner or else every­thing else in the tent got cov­ered in mud too. It was a real pain, but any­way our new tent has a zip-up veran­dah (or at least you’d call it that if it wasn’t so laugh­ably, pathet­i­cally small). Which looks like a con­ve­nient place to take your boots off before you come “inside”. FTW!

Last year’s tent cost $29.95, thank you Ana­conda. This year we splashed out – with the 30% dis­count, it came to grand total of $38. That $8.05 had bet­ter be money well spent.