Mark has trouble with a tent at Snowdon
Where do I begin?, a couple of weeks ago on the bank holiday weekend me and some old school friends went camping in a lovely site in Snowdonia to climb Crig Goch route (hard, ridge route) of Snowdon. When we turned up it was like we had hit the jackpot, the weather was sunny and the site was beautiful, located next to a very very big lake. We pitched up our tents and spirits were very high at this point. We settled in started a camp fire and cooked dinner. During the course of the evening the weather started to turn and spots of rain descended on what had been a good start to the trip. We all went to bed, and in my Easy camp 6 berth tent was me and two others. As we settled down to bed the rain started to get very heavy. During the night we experienced some very heavy rain and wind, which managed to keep me up most of the night. As the morning broke I sat up and looked at my mates and with horror I noticed his sleeping bag was all wet on the top, and when i looked up the water was dripping on him like a running tap. At this point I started to panic as when I looked round all I could see was puddles of water everywhere. The tent I had was only used twice before and on both times it was a lovely dry weekend so this problem had not arisen.
It wasn’t long before my friends woke up and the true extent of the flooding was witnessed, as they moved their stuff all their clothes was swimming along with their mobile phones (one being an iphone). We moved all our stuff and got out. For the rest of the morning I was the butt of everyone’s joke as having a tent which was as about as waterproof as a sieve and I felt terrible that I had ruined two phones and let my mates with less clothes to wear. We spent the day climbing Snowdon in the worst weather possible which was very dangerous. We returned to camp very tired, wet and cold and as the others opened their lovely clean, dry tents I opened mine and it was worse, the puddles were so big they covered half my foot. My friends decided to bunk in with other people but I was stuck with the swimming pool as there was no room anywhere else, so i started to scoop out all the water with a small saucepan. We had dinner, few beers round the camp fire and went to bed. As we did the rain started again and my roof again was dripping everywhere, there was no way I could sleep in here and had no choice but to sleep in the car.
What a nightmare!!!! and being very angry the tent went straight in the bin on departure day.
Apart from this I had a great time camping and am looking to purchase the Hi gear Corado 4 from GO Outdoors Cardiff branch in the coming weeks ready for next year to take my wife and 2 year old.
Mark Morgan-Green
Neath
