Our old tent is falling apart after years of use and abuse at numerous scout camps and trips, and it was about time to look for something new.

One of my wifes criteria was that we should be able to stand up to dress in the morning (or in the middle of the night when you have to care for a distraught scout) - and that we should ideally be able to have enough space to sit around while a typical british summer rainstorm passes by.

Ideally we should also have space for a group of explorers to pop in for a game of cards/storing supplies etc.

So we looked at lots of tents, but in the end we were looking more and more at the lavvo/tipi type tents with a central pole arrangement around a roughly round tentbase, including a fitted groundsheet (again a absolute must for my wife).

To make a long story shorter we bought a tent yesterday - from a Danish manufacturer called Outwell, more specifically a tent called "Indian Lake".

And here it is in our garden (it has to be left out in the rain for a few days apparently as part of the "burning in" process)

(Click for larger pic)

It's not exactly a backpacking tent (fortunately we have another tent for that) - as we bought it with the extra groundsheet and the inner rug - but oh boy is it fantastic for what we want to use it for.

Setting it up is not exactly easy the first time around - but we found at least 2 training videos on the web, and we managed to figure it out fairly quickly.

More to follow.