Overland with Kids

Recenty, we bought tickets for the Billing Show in July to see the plethora of equipment and options available - whether roof tent, trailer, caravan - ideally we want to bring only the Land Rover on our travels but reality bites - particularly in terms of comfort for the children for sleeping and this is making us think a bit more carefully.

We have seriously been thinking about fitting a roof tent to the Land Rover, saving us the need to pitch a ground tent or store bedding & tents etc. inside the vehicle. The main reasoning being

 - Ease of set-up (roof tent - 5 mins max)

 - To keep equipment inside vehicle to minimum

- Keep rear of vehicle fairly free to accommodate 2nd row reclining seats for children on long trips.

Having just done a shake down trip in Wells-next-the-Sea in North Norfolk recently, if you opened the rear of our vehicle with all the stuff we had loaded (not to mention the ‘how badly’ we had loaded!  - photo is testimony!), you might not have gotten away alive from the free-falling equipment you would have encountered on opening the rear door - “on your head be it!” - as they say.

The shake down also opened our eyes to some practicalities - children very comfortable in a roomy ground tent - suited family better. Can have relatives and friends to stay due to extra room/s available - debatable whether they would want to stay though and instead go and book themselves into the nearest hotel - with a proper roof, 4 walls and other creature comforts!. With a ground tent - you wouldn’t need to pack up in the way you would a roof tent if you want to take vehicle sight-seeing or something. Instead you could leave ground tent and your ’stuff’ fairly securely to return to. Of course, if just staying one night or something and then moving on then pitching probably not an option.

From this trip, we thought maybe a combination of a roof tent (half the size of originally planned) plus a ground tent might be the better option. This way we would still have room for bikes for European leg.

We looked to eBay for inspiration and have been regular visitors to the roof tent section.  Originally, we were after a Howling Moon 2.4m x 2.4m tent but due to weight (98kilos versus Land Rover total capacity), this has become a concern, particularly if we want to bring bikes etc. The shake down trip further confirmed our need to reduce this roof tent size - if we are going to have one - and it would be used in combination to ground or for emergency one nighters by road side or for quick stays.

Meantime, by accident, we stumbled on a B’rakhah Ingonyama - on eBay - a kind of compact expedition type caravan trailer complete with fridge, gun store, beds, awning, shower, cooking facility, up to 100cm wade capability etc. PERRRRRRRRFECT!!!! we thought - compact and not overly cumbersome - in fact -looked like it fitted the bill perfectly. We got really excited about it and followed it’s bidding progress for a few days.

How gutted we were when the seller withdrew it from auction today - we were ready to bid in ‘as seen’ condition on eBay - felt it would have ticked alot of boxes for us.

We are now back to the drawing board.  So, if anyone knows anyone in the UK interested in selling their B’rakhah - please contact us!

Diary (Blog)