The Camping Forum

[Camp Moose]

Our old tent is dead.
I need a new one.
Was thinking of a Vango Samara 600.
Has anyone got one of these?
If so could you post some pics of the inside , please, as there's not too many of them on the internet.
Not interested in the extension just the basic tent itself.
Cheers.

[Wayne]

I'm pretty sure they had a Samara 600 set up at The Yeomans camp show at the weekend

Can't think if I went in it. Where are you in the country ?, there might be a camp show near you.

[Camp Moose]

hiya Wayne, we're in Swindon.
Went to Attwools near Gloucester on Saturday morning, looked at tents but not that closely as we thought ours was still ok so didn't pay much attention to them. we were up there to look for other bits & bobs.
It was only when we got home & got tent out of garage we saw it hadn't survived nearly 20 months of storage.
(We gave camping a miss last year & stayed in a French cottage for summer holiday.)

EDIT: Just found this video of it being erected & some internal shots on here.

http://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/index.cf ... creen.html

another edit, another video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7cfEz5XNek

yet another edit: just found this 360 degree interior view on here.
http://www.yeomansoutdoors.co.uk/produc ... -tent.aspx

[Wayne]

They should be helpful.

[Camp Moose]

Cotswold Camping just north of us on the A419 have a tent show this weekend.
Just been out to look at the Samara & will buy one later in the Spring.
Have a cottage holiday in Normandy to go on first.

[cat27m]

Not sure if you've bought your Samara yet but a friend of mine has just bought one and it and it had it's first outing on Friday night. Unfortunately when they put it up one of the tensioning straps broke and the zip was faulty on the front door. It was a windy night and even with the guys being triple pegged the front end of the tent (the bit with the wings) collapsed and brought the rest of the tent down on top of them. We ended up with 11 people in our Tigris 800 after they bailed out at 2am.

The front 'wings' seem to constantly catch the wind and with only two guys at that end just couldn't withstand any sort of gust at all.

Their tent is now being picked up this week and they are not buying another Samara. Hope this info helps if you haven't already bought one!

Cathleen

[Camp Moose]

Cheers for that, no not bought it yet.
maybe we wont now.
Thanks for the warning.

[Ddavidwhitehead]

I have a Vango Samara 600 + porch. It has been out in a storm with the front wings facing into the wind coming from the Atlantic Ocean in Cornwall and nothing happened. The only thing that I can think of is the previous people who returned the Vango Samara did not pitch it correctly. You have to pitch a tent square otherwise the doors won't close and it puts stress on the zips etc. And it was probably not pegged out correctly at the front.

I have losts of experience with various tents as I have been camping with my family for over twenty five years.
The vango Samara 600 is a great tent and I would totally recommed it. Coltswold camping at Maidstone had one survive 60 miles an hour winds. In fact they tell me that the Samara was the only tent that was not damaged out of the whole display and they say that they are really impressed with it. Even the fences around the display was all blown over. Don't take my word for it give them a call and ask them themselves. If you want a tent that is big as the Samara then you will have to look at paying nearly £1000.00 if you buy an Outwell or something. You could kit out 2 Samaras for that amount of money. Cost per use makes it a bargain and a great tent!!! Why do you think that they are hard to get hold of???

[Rob-merlin1973]

David ... welcome to the forum
Many thanks for sharing your experience ..... i agree that a lot of the time damage occurs to tents becouse they are simply pitched wrong

[Camp Moose]

Cheers for the reassurance but we bought the Nevada L which was the improved version of our old Licata 600

[thetentfactory]

Hi
Re the Samara and how well it stands up to the weather..The samara has the thickest glassfibre poles I have seen on a tent. Normally these tents fall down due to not buying the right pegs for the right weather and ground conditions. Our show model Samara 600 has stood up to some terrible wind conditions and yes we do sometimes put extra guy ropes on the tents but this is what we call camp craft and we try to educate customers about this sort of thing..
Now I get to the pitching video above. Please do not pitch your Samara or any tunnel tent like this.

I have put a link below to a couple of videos we have done, this may help for campers with tunnel tents.

http://valuetents.co.uk/tents/3--4-bert ... -tent.html

http://valuetents.co.uk/tents/5--6-bert ... -tent.html

Gary Cross
http://www.valuetents.co.uk