Camping with the Caterham : equipment

 Fig.1: banana for scale

TL;DR Trekking gear, caring about volume

🦌 After missing most of Summer driving opportunities, my intent is to make for it in September one way or another.

The vision of a Seven at a campsite always tickled my fancy. Especially since our yearly holidays are nothing less than 3 weeks under a tent. Roughly speaking, I've probably slept for year in a tent since 2000.

That began as a scout leader, followed by holidays with various groups of friends and nowadays as a family of four. 

In those instances volume and weight are no concern, and even a classic Mini Cooper could store plenty for two people.

🏎️ Going camping with a Seven is really an other game, as 120 liters in the boot is all we have. There is virtually no space in the cabin at all. Assuming the car jack and lever would be relocated to the engine bay, the full boot area could be available for camping equipment.

Clothes and luggage would go in the "Boot bag" I got from Soft Bits for Sevens (and still haven't tried on the car at all) . 

I can stow the half-hood in its bag behind the driver seat, and if I take the full hood with me, it could be attached over the boot bag or boot cover.

⛺ My research for compact gear obviously began with a tent. I've compared about 15 models and landed on the Sparrow Lightweight from High Peak. It strikes the right balance of being a comparatively spacious double skin tent that is on the light side at 2.2kg and also very compact when packed (35cm cylinder with a diameter of 16cm). 

"High Peak" is the (german) brand of my trusty first tent. We got it out and set it up in the backyard last week-end to give it some fresh air. It's a spacious dome for 4 people, weighs 4.8kg and was not designed to be compact. The colours have faded from UV exposure but it's still in great condition, I have a lot of good memories tied to that one. I once had to share it with an other scout leader that came unprepared, ending up at 3 people for a few nights when I hosted a (girl) friend whose tent was torn by the wind. I've slept 3 cold weeks under the rain near Spa, a few nighs with some fellow Mini enthousiasts, and finally a bunch of 2 weeks holidays in Corsica with it.

I did order a Sparrow 2 'LW' from Fritz-Berger for 110€, it was 160€ at Decathlon.
Other options included a "Union Jack" Quechua 2 seconds, but those are a pain to source, bulky and heavy too at 3kg. Next in line were the Quechua MH100 F&B (premium version of the pair of MH100 the kids use on holiday), and a yellow Geertop from Amazon. 

🛏️ Quite immediatly, Amazon understood what I was doing, and led me to lightweight air mattresses and sleeping bags. The recommendations were spot on and I placed orders for Trinordic stuff as YouTube reviews were positive. So-called sleeping pads weigh each 550g and are packed as 24x9cm cylinders. Sleeping bags are only 700g and packed as 18x16cm cylinders. I also got a dedicated 15 liters "pump sack" from the same brand.

Buying "used" nearly-everything (returned...) and splitting between Amazon France and Germany got me the lot for 130€ instead of 180€.

Running total is 4.7kg for allegedly comfortable home and beds (by hikers standards). Overall that's just above 12 liters, which is a whole 10% of the Caterham boot 🚚.  It didn't take long to imagine everything in a bag similar to the one I use for the full hood. So I got a 1-meter one, this time with a 20cm square-ish profile.

🍳 I continued my frenzy on Aliexpress, and found a cute little rollable/foldable aluminium table, a lightweight 210x140cm "beach" mat, XPE foam "picnic" cushions for sitting, and finally the most compact stove with CP250 butane cartridges I could find. Everything is super compact, and only the stove is on the heavy side at 1.2kg - it can hold 15kg. The 500g table is no slouch either as it can withstand 10kg.

🪑 As the foam cushions felt rather stern, I looked for more comfortable alternatives and found a pair of "Tarka" backpacking chairs. 850g each, 34x10cm packed (probaby slimmer if packed to fit the empty space that corner the cylinders that are the tent and sleeping bags). 

Simulating everything in CAD confirmed that everything will go into the black bag. As it's flexible it should fit in the Caterham despite its length. If not, I will use it to keep the kit together when stored, and just stuff everything in the boot when we feel like camping.

Now that the kit is complete, I confirm that all fits in the intended bag, total weight is 10kg. Not bad for comfy sleeping and sitting for 2, a table, stove, and small things like a 8 liters water bag, clothesline, a pair of flashlights and what have you...

🔥 As I also got a flatpack stainless steel grill/firepit, it could come with us too. It's only 1kg and the size of a laptop when folded. A 80x60cm fireproof tarp has been added the same carrying bag.

So you have it all below on a CAD render : All the gear set-up, and also stored in the black bag. The folded BBQ stored in its carrying bag in the white cardboard box.

Everything is olive green. I wanted yellow but the tent and Trinodric gear are only available in drab green, so I got all the rest in the same colour. I guess I could use it for expeditions with the WW2 Jeep as well... 🇺🇸🪖 

TESTING :
Before going to campsite nearby or even better in the Rursee area, we went for a full dress rehearsal in the backyard. Our daughter did spend 2 nights in it to get some fresh air after a rather hot week, and we spent a night once all the sleeping gear had arrived.

📈 In true nerd fashion, I've used a pair of BLE sensors to monitor temparature and humidity. From that I conclude that a 12-year old kid gets the inside about 1.3°C above ambient with the tent open, while I got 2.6°C alone and 4°C with the misses. With the tent fully closed-down, we got 5.3°C over ambient. Humidity was between 80 and 90 outside, 70 to 80% in the tent.  See the chart down below for the full detail. There was some wind from 21:00 to 4:00 (8kph average with 15kph gust), which stopped until 8:30 before getting back to similar speeds.

Getting down to 17°C inside with a bit less than 12°C ambient was a rather nice surprise, we could have closed the top vents for an even better result. With those conditions, the "15°C" sleeping bags were adequate and comfortable, even wearing only a t-shirt. 

Sleeping pads are nice too, with the only caveat that the included pillows really need some soft padded covering. My idea of using the top of the sleeping bag was fine for the pillow effect, very less so for the convenience and continous management each time I moved. She opted for a bath towel that just remained in place for the whole night, it was way more convienient. We also removed from pressure from her pillow, adjusting it to her taste.

At dawn I was greeting by Venus and Jupiter, always a nice sight. Followed by a nice sunrise through the trees. 

In the morning we checked the temperature for various door configurations and we did experiment with laying both sleeping bags flat fully open could be a viable option. It's of for the bottom layer but we are pretty sure the top one would be too narrow and one of us quickly left with no blanket.