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From Times Online

July 30, 2008

The ultimate music festival tent?

Ginny McGrath takes a top of the range tent to a music festival to see if technology can overcome mud, sweat and bleary eyes

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Ginny McGrath

Watch Ginny McGrath's review of a top-of-the-range tent and portable barbeque

Kate Moss didn’t make it easy for us female festival goers when she sashayed through Glastonbury in a pristine minidress – she raised the standards for festival attire. No longer were paint-spattered jeans and geography field trip kagool de rigeur – the catwalk had hit the countryside.

But how to emerge looking like a princess when you’ve spent the night under canvas? It’s one thing being a VIP, where you’ve got access to showers without queues and your accommodation is a 40-foot Winnebago – it’s quite another looking model-esque when you wake up in a sweltering tent in the wellies you’ve been wearing for 48 hours.

For those of us without a palace on wheel, there’s hope – tents are getting more sophisticated and none more so than the “air conditioned” 2008 Coleman Exponent Modulus x4.

If you’re taking public transport this tent is a no-no – the tent is as weighty as its name, at 27kg. So, you need a car with a decent boot and a strong pair of arms, but once it’s up it’s worth it.

Putting the tent up took about 90 minutes. That said I think I could cut it to 30 minutes second time around – we arrived in encroaching darkness with light drizzle and wind, and zilch preparation (to start with, we thought the second parcel contained an outer shell to cover the tent – it was the second bedroom).

Our model would sleep a football team, but if you want comfort, it’s four sleepers with the auxillary bedroom attached, and two without. You enter the tent through a full-height door, with a flap that can be hoisted as a porch, into the lobby/lounge where you can stand up, share a meal, and store kit. The bedrooms stick out from opposite sides.

If I’m making it sound like a house that’s because it was – we were a tall grey beacon in a campsite of mostly tiny green coffins, and I felt very smug when we lounged in comfort during the showers. It also stayed upright in the gusts of wind that felled numerous tents and gazebos around us, despite the extra height.

The tent has been thoughtfully designed with lots of ventilation flaps – there’s also a gizmo that the tent maker calls a “Cool Window Fan”, or “air conditioning for tents”. It fits into a custom-made flap of the tent and is battery operated to move air through the tent. Sadly England’s inclement weather meant it was blankets we needed and not air con, but a brief test proved it would save the day in hotter climes.

It works rather like a Victorian sash window, letting cool air in at the base and warm air out through the tent’s top or side ventilation panels. It also helps to stop condensation developing on the inside of the tent walls.

Alongside the swanky tent we brought along another luxury item - a barbeque on wheels. The Coleman RoadTrip Pro Barbecue is another hefty item, although you can drag it across most terrain with its extendable handle and wheels. We had to sneak in the gas bottle, which was larger than the 2.7kg allowance permitted by the festival organisers, but our covert morning fry-ups were worth it, and we got more than a couple of admiring glances from our neighbours.

Anyone who’s woken up in a sweaty tent will vouch that a cool tent that allows a decent lie-in is a God-send at a festival. And while I wouldn’t say we were up to gracing the catwalk come Sunday morning, I think we’d slept more than the bleary-eyed campers around us. Come Latitude 2009, I know which tent I'll be packing.

Need to know

The 2008 Coleman Exponent Modulus x4 tent costs £339.99, the Cool Window Fan costs £19.99 and the RoadTrip Pro Barbecue is £199.99. For more details go to www.coleman.eu