This is fantastic: a model Defender 90 performing some serious off road manouvres!
Land Rover Toys & Models
There’s an amazing range of tiny Land Rover toys and models around, testimony to the popularity of Landys, for kids and grown-ups, and grown-up kids of course!
Remote Control Land Rover Toys
There’s lots of Land Rover Model Toys around, but if you want to actually drive a toy Land Rover, instead of taking years developing a shrinking potion, try one of these remote control Land Rovers in your garden. Fun for kids before they’re old enough to drive a real Land Rover, and for the grown-up kids, set up an off road course for your remote control Land Rover in your garden!
Land Rover Haynes Manuals
Amazon is a good place to find the Haynes Workshop manuals you need. They stock both new and used books via the amazon marketplace. Here’s a selection of what’s in thier catalogue currently.
Land Rover Camping: Safari Tent…
The options for Land Rover Camping are endless of course, but a few designs are of special interest:
The OzTent from http://uk.oztent.com…
The OZ Tent - collapsible framed tent
the CaranEx… (see ukcampsite.co.uk/tents/ )
The CaranEx as Land Rover Tent - shown with Defender 110 CSW
and of course Roof Tents:
Australian Land Rover Roof Tent
There’s a new option from specialist tent, tipi and tarp manufacturer “Green Outdoor” called the “Campfire Tent”. It has some advantages over the Oztent (won’t fit in a 90 when folded down at 2M – won’t even fit on most 90 roofracks except diagonally which takes up a lot of space) and the CaranEx (lacking in features and still fairly expensive) and Roof Tent (hugely expensive and can’t be used as free-standing tents, also they take up all the roofrack space generally. I’ve been testing the Green outdoor offering and am enormously impressed – at £499 (currently on sale) it’s well worth looking at as it makes a fantastic Land rover tent as well as a perfect “safari-style” free standing tent. You can even pitch it in front of the campfire (hence the name) and have the heat reflect around the tent for maximium warmth as well as that true “fireside” experience.
The front opens out to give you wide open views of whatever country you’ve driven so hard to get to, whether it be Morrocan mountains, the African Savanna or the Welsh hills. The tent is very well featured in terms of doors, windows, full mozzie netting, full inner tent, as well as a modular design in terms of side wings, front awning etc. On top of that, and the killer feature for me is that it’s cleverly made out of natural materials – Chinese Hemp Cotton canvas specifically, in a beautiful soft brown colour that at the same time both stands out and blends in with Nature. The material is also waterproofed so the canvas can remain thinner than traditional cotton canvas, and therefore it’s doesn’t have that heavy weight, especially when wet that puts so many people off canvas traditional tents. But it retains the look (and feel, and even the sound) of classic “safari tents” of old, and that really adds something to the experience when you’re out in the bush.
Here’s some pictures of the tent set up with my Land Rover 110 HCPU, where it fits perfectly at the rear of the vehicle, allowing easy access through rear, with use of the tailgate for kitchen duties, and yet you can drive off easily and close the front of the tent up, or move the vehicle during the day and shelter form either the sun or rain under the big awning. Side doors and wings zip on or off easily making it very flexible. You can of course put the tent side-on to the vehicle as well.
I’ll be using this set up a lot now as it’s proved perhaps the perfect 4×4 tent, with some real advantages over the other options, and at a very reasonable price you get something unusual, fit for purpose and really a thing of great beauty, as well as a solid piece of gear that will last a lifetime or close to hopefully. So, in short, I’m impressed!
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The Tent with one side-wing zipped off, showing the inner tent and mozzie net etc.
The side wing left on, with the side door and mozzie net zipped open.
The side doors also have a ventilation flap which can be opened slightly for air, OR rolled up as a full window - very nice feature and the attention to detail is very high, as is the manufacturing quality.
A view into the interior space and inner tent.
Tailgate Kitchen!!
The Campfire...
The awning fits snugly over the top of the 110 HCPU pickup - it is the right height for most landrovers, and has a single centre guy rope which secures the awning to the vehicle.
The Campfire glows into the night....
Landrover Gear… Army Surplus.
Some new additions from Marcruss Army Surplus in Hotwells: Two 5 litre Jerry cans, for diesel as my Defender’s fuel gauge is about as reliable as a… 20 year old Landrover fuel gauge!; and short handled folding army shovel and pick, and a couple of fantastic aluminium frame canvas and wood “Landrover Chairs” also army surplus (these from tents plus).
[click for larger image]
Winter Landrover Camp
A quick Get Out & Stay Out trip up to the Mendip hills in Somerset, driving some excellent greenlanes along the way. It was the first week of February so pretty cold, but we used Australian “swag bags” (like a ‘bivvy’ bag, with sleeping bag inside) and the “campfire tent” which stays open to the campfire and so we were pretty warm. Highlights were seeing some Roe deer up close, and cooking some fantastic local rump steak on sticks over the fire.
The tent used here is a special beast: hemp cotton canvas “Campfire Tent” based on a traditional North American “Baker Tent” design, but built with modern materials and fittings, and a fantastic modular design that’s ideal for Land rover camping, with front or side entrances, mozzie net covered windows and ventilation flaps and comes with a full inner tent and various configurations of poles etc. Easily attachable to any Landy either at the rear or side, but works free-standing too. With a campfire out in front it is THE camp experience tent as far as I’m concerned- who wants to be locked away in a plastic, noisy dome tent, missing all the wildlife and views abround you. It’s available from the manufacturer, specialist tent, tipi and tarp designers “Green Outdoor” and they have a big sale on curently so well worth checking out. I’ll be featuring the tent here rigged up to my Landy shortly.
Australian Swag – a perfect 4×4 companion…
The Australian swag is a tough durable bedroll that can hold your sleeping bag and blankets and has a built in mattress. It can withstand heavy rain and simply rolls up to go – perfect for Landrover camping without the need for a full tent. although made for the Australian bush as demonstrated by Ray Mears here, it’s just as good in our climate and conditions, we just don’t need the scorpion-proofing as much, and thankfully so – one of the great delights about UK camping is the complete lack of dangerous insects and animals! No excuse not to Get Out & Stay Out as much as you can then. But the think canvas serves to keep out windy and rainy weather, and we have just as good a night sky as the southern hemisphere, and this is the way to enjoy it – for almost 3 seasons if the weather’s clear a swag can get you sleeping out under the stars in style and comfort – it’s THE way to go in my opinion. Just throw it in the back of your Landrover and your ready to go anywhere, stay anywhere! Here’s a video of a test of a genuine imported Australian swag from www.theaussieshop.co.uk:
Campfire Tent for Landrover Camping
What’s a “Campfire Tent” when it’s at home – well the video below IS at home – my “Backyard Test” of a new tent very suitable for Landrover Camping. Similar in layout to the popular “Oztent” that has gained a lot of attention recently in the Landrover community, the “Campfire Tent” is a concept that dates back to 18th Century Canadian explorations featured in Ray Mears”Northern Wilderness” series currently running on the BBC (and BBC iPLayer of course) where fur traders needed a simple canvas tent suitable for shelter and importantly cooking and living in on long exploration journeys, many months away from any civilization, as they traded with the Native American tribes in beaver pelts in return for modern tools such as metal axe heads and cooking pots.
The “Baker Tent” as it was known then was later made popular in the Canadian ‘open’ canoeing community (i.e. not kayaks!) through the inspirational works of explorer, filmmaker and writer Bill Mason (the “Grandfather of modern canoe-camping”) – see image below or get the fantastic book “Song Of The Paddle – an illustrated guide to Wilderness Camping”.
The tent I am trying out here is from an environmentally aware outdoor products company Green Outdoor who feature natural hemp-cotton canvas tarps, tipis and tents as well as some really innovative materials using recycled PTFE & polysester. It’s based squarely on the traditional Baker Tent though in design. Why this design? Well the advantages of a Campfire Tent are having a flexible living space that’s importantly “open to yoru surroundings” – Why go into the great outdoors only to lock yourself away inside a closed tent? In addition the open front means cooking in bad weather under the awning is manageable, and in cold weather the ability to have a campfire that reflects heat into the tent itself is a big advantage – Ray Mears in his Swedish Artic series shows how a long fire set lengthways in front of this kind of shelter can burn all night providing reflected heat in minus 30-degree temperatures.
Bill Mason’s Campfire Tent from “Song Of The Paddle”:
But the main benefit is in this openness to your surroundings – if you’re out there you don’t want to miss a deer wandering past your camp, or the chance to make a wish for a lottery win on a shooting star burning up in the atmosphere above you. Or an owl that flies low across your camp in the early evening. Using open tents these are all things I’ve experienced on my travels.
I’ll be testing this tent specifically as a Landrover camping product over the winter and will report back as I go – so far it’s a beautifully made, well finished, tough and durable tent with just the characteristics a campfire tent needs. Stay Tuned!
For more detailed specs and info on the tent see the Green Outdoor website
