Arrive With Daylight to Spare

The most useful decision on a first trip is made before any of the outdoor skills come into it: arrive at least two hours before dark. Pitching in daylight is straightforward; pitching in the dark, in the rain, with a tent you have set up once, is the experience people describe when they say camping is not for them.

Work backwards from sunset, add an hour for the drive taking longer than expected, and leave earlier than feels necessary.

Reading a Pitch

Stand in the spot before you unpack anything and check, in this order:

Is it flat? Not “flat enough” — properly flat. A slope you cannot feel while standing becomes obvious after twenty minutes lying on it, and you spend the night sliding towards the tent wall. If the ground has any slope at all, sleep with your head uphill, which is much less unpleasant than the alternative.

Where does water go? This is the question that separates a dry night from a memorable one. Look for the low point, and do not be in it. Avoid hollows and dips, however inviting the shelter looks. Avoid obvious channels where water has run before — you can usually see them as smoother lines of flattened grass or bare earth. Slightly raised ground is better than sheltered ground.

Do not dig a trench around the tent. It damages the site, is banned at most managed sites, and a well-chosen pitch does not need it.

What is above you? Look up properly. Dead branches, whole dead trees, and anything hanging are the reason experienced campers do not pitch under trees in wind. Trees also drip for hours after rain stops, and sap is unpleasant on a flysheet.

What is on the ground? Clear stones, cones, and sharp sticks from the footprint area — they are far less comfortable through a mat than they look, and they are what punctures inflatables. Check for anthills and animal trails.

How close is the water? Near a river or lake is pleasant, colder, damper, and much buggier. Rising water levels are a real risk in some places after upstream rain, and many areas have rules about minimum distance from watercourses. A little way back is generally better.

Which way is the wind? Pitch so that the smallest, lowest end of the tent faces the wind, and if the tent has a door on one side, that door should generally be away from it. Wind hitting a broad tent wall makes noise all night and puts real load on the poles.

Which way is the sun? A tent facing east becomes an oven shortly after sunrise in summer, which is either an alarm clock or a problem. In cold weather it is welcome. Shade in the afternoon is what makes a camp pleasant to sit in.

At a managed campsite, add: distance to the toilets — close is convenient and noisy, far is quieter and a walk at 3am — and the traffic pattern, since pitches beside the entrance track or the washing-up area get walked past all night.

Pitching, Roughly in Order

Read your specific tent’s instructions once at home. In general terms the sequence is:

  1. Lay the footprint and position it, tucked so no edge extends past the tent.
  2. Spread the tent on it, oriented the way you decided — door and low end where you want them.
  3. Peg the corners first, with the fabric pulled taut but not stretched, so the base is a proper rectangle before any poles go in. Getting this wrong is why tents end up creased and sagging.
  4. Assemble the poles and put them together fully — half-seated shock-corded sections are how poles snap.
  5. Raise the tent, threading or clipping according to the design.
  6. Fit the flysheet, making sure it does not touch the inner anywhere. Contact means water tracks through by capillary action and the tent “leaks” where it is not leaking at all.
  7. Peg out the fly and all the guy lines. Not the ones that seem necessary — all of them. Guy lines are what stops the fly touching the inner and what holds the tent up in wind, and skipping them is the single most common pitching mistake.
  8. Adjust tension until panels are smooth and there is a clear air gap between fly and inner all the way around.

Pegs go in at about 45 degrees, sloping away from the tent, driven most of the way in. Pushed straight down they pull out. In soft ground, use longer pegs or bury a peg horizontally as a deadman. In hard or rocky ground, a rock on top of a peg laid flat, or lines tied to rocks or trees, does the job. Take spare pegs — the ones supplied with cheap tents bend on the first stone.

Do not hammer pegs with a rock if you value the peg. A proper mallet is a few pounds. A boot heel works for soft ground.

Setting Up the Rest of Camp

Keep the tent for sleeping. Boots, cooking, and wet gear live in the porch or outside. A tent used as a wardrobe and a kitchen gets damp and dirty within a day.

Put the kitchen a sensible distance away, downwind, on flat ground, out of the walking route between the tent and everything else. Food smells near a sleeping area attract animals — in some regions that means small ones and in some it means bears, and where it means bears there will be specific local rules about food storage that you should read before you arrive rather than after.

Establish where things live on the first evening: torch in the same pocket, keys in the same place, water containers in the same spot. Everything you need after dark should be findable by hand.

Note your surroundings. Where the toilets are, what the site looks like from the track, and which way you came. Campsites are surprisingly disorientating at night, and a small light left on inside the tent makes it findable from a distance.

Wild Camping and Access

Rules on camping outside managed sites vary enormously — permitted with conditions in some countries, tolerated informally in some places, and straightforwardly illegal in others, sometimes varying by region within a single country. Check the specific rules where you are going, and check them from an official source rather than a forum post from years ago.

Where it is allowed, the general expectations are: arrive late, leave early, small groups, no fires unless explicitly permitted, well away from buildings and roads, and no trace at all when you leave. Fire rules in particular change seasonally and are frequently suspended entirely in dry conditions — a fire ban is not advice.

Leaving

Pack up in a sensible order: everything out of the tent, then bedding, then the tent last, so nothing has to come back out. Dry the tent if you possibly can — even a few minutes in sun and wind helps — and if you pack it wet, unpack and dry it at home within a day or two. A wet tent left rolled up grows mould in remarkably little time and is generally ruined by it.

Walk the site once, looking down, before you leave. Pegs, guy lines, tent bags, and rubbish are what get left behind, and the pegs are always the last thing anyone finds.