In 1995 I bit the bullet and paid £250 for a Eureka Hobbit 2 man tent in Australia. Over the next 12 years I probably spent 12 months in it including a couple of months in the winds of Patagonia and it finally expired with worn out zips, leaking seams and fracturing poles, money well spent.
At the same time I bought a cheap self inflating matt which fell apart in two years, I then did the right thing and bought a Thermarest which I still have. If you use it a lot it pays to buy quality, the other point is in many parts of the world you cannot replace camping equipment so it has to last.

An Inuit mate of mine gave me an igloo last winter.
It only lasted until the sun came out.

The original posters question is really unanswerable.

What you need is equipment that will handle the conditions you experience. The trick here is being able to predict those conditions.

For me I do "summer" camping in Europe. This includes spring and Autumn. I like to be warm so I carry a Coleman Hudson 450 sleeping bag. I have never found it wanting even in icy conditions in the Alpine mountains, frost pockets in North France or snowed in in my car. I have two tents. A four man double skin tent that is very warm and waterproof (£30 Argos) and a cheap £10 dome tent, that keeps out rain including heavy thunderstorms in the Pyrenees, but being single skin is a bit warm in the sun and cool in cold wind. The bag compensates for this. It does not need any pegs to be erected, but works better if they are. Can be moved easily when erect so you can squeeze it into exactly the right position when wild camping or seeking shelter.
Of course in unpredictable conditions either of these tents could fail but the balance of probability is they wont.

I have three stoves, a £10 one that fits on top of a 270/470 cartridge, an Optimus omnifuel and a gas double burner with grill for car camping. I have just completed a 2,000 mile trip with wife in the car to Rhein falls Switzwerland, bike rally in N Germany and back. Despite being in the car and having room, my stove of choice was the £10 single burner. because it is very quick and simple to deploy for a quick cuppa and will simmer properly when heating or cooking food.

In the end it is down to luck and your own perceptions of risk. I have chosen to break down the functions of different pieces of equipment. The tent to provide shelter and keep me dry. The bag to keep me warm so I can sleep. Mt camp bed to keep me off the floor. the stove does its job of heating drinks and cooking.

As I said, making the perfect choice is impossible, often even with hindsight. Same as looking for the perfect bike.

Oh! yup, I went by car as my Enfield is still in bits after the crank failed last year in Poland, but rattling or not it did get me near enough home to get home.
Ok so the Enfield was on that occasion not up to the job but without it I would not have chatted to the German biking couple at the campsite in the Alps, or the hotel manageress in Germany who wanted a small enough bike so she could ride with her husband. Nor the two young Czech lads on a country road who were riding harleys that were older than themselves which they had both lovingly restored. They reminded me of my early biking days back in the early 1960s (1961 to be exact) when I and most of my friends rode bikes as old as we were, many ex WD from the war. Courtesy of "Pride & Clarke".

I bought a Coleman Coastline for a trip a while back. Perfect size and features.

After about a 1.5 weeks of pack up and set down everyday the fiberglass tent poles started to break at the joins. 6 weeks later and after replacing over half of the poles the zip started to fail. The tent ended up just lasting the 13 week trip.

If I could got a more expensive version that had better fiberglass poles or shaped aluminium poles I would have.

So I am saying buy the best you can that fits the trip and your budget.

The more I've paid for things, the more I've been disappointed.

With most equipment, you seem to get a cut off price where quality doesn't seem to climb with cost.

If you compare a £10 tent with a £1000 tent there is certainly going to be some big differences. That expensive tent will not be 100x better though.

That doesn't mean you should buy the cheapest crap on the market, because you WILL be disappointed.

You can get excellent quality gear at fairly low prices if you research, shop around and ignore fancy names and marketing.

Never be afraid to buy second hand gear. I have saved THOUSANDS like this. There are tons and tons of almost new bike/travel gear on Ebay/gumtree which is going for peanuts.

I think the biggest factor is being realistic with yourself and your trip and what you NEED to spend. (I've also wasted thousands thinking I need stuff I don't)

Why get a £300 stove designed for climbing Everest when you will be boiling water for coffee at sea level ??? A £60 Coleman Dual fuel is actually a lot more practical for the task.

Why buy a £1000 tent designed for the Antarctic when you will probably just be getting drizzled on in a Camp site in Wales etc ?? Vango make loads of tents under £150 which are FANTASTIC.

Do you need £1300 Aluminium panniers when a set of £35 Ex-Military canvas bags will outlast you and your bike combined and weigh 30kg less ?

Do you need a £600 GPS system when a 5 year old model for £100 does exactly the same thing, minus the features that most people will never use ?


Do some research, use your head and don't get sucked in by marketing. I wish I had listened to people telling me the same thing when I started out. I can't actually think of anything "expensive" that anyone would 'need' to buy when doing a RTW at all really.

If I didn't buy £1300 Metal Mules I could of spent another two months in South America. Those tin boxes are still in my shed keeping spiders warm at winter, where they have been for the last four years. Think about it...


Ted

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

The 3 man Vango Force ten tent I used at the recent autumn rally cost me (roughly) £750! Except it didn't. I actually paid about £70 for it and inflation took care of the rest because I bought it in 1975. In those days it was pretty much as high end as it got and, to date anyway, quality has out. It still gets used a lot and despite having seven other tents to choose from in the loft it's still pretty much my tent of choice. And this isn't a one-off freak, like pre war light bulbs that are still working, nor is it still in use on the "Trigger's axe" principle. Cynthia Milton has the same tent of about the same age and I have a friend with one about five years older. That's the up side of buying high end - they can last a lifetime (if you keep them for a lifetime). If you're a gear freak and buy expensive tents on the basis of "this year's colours" then it's probably £1000 wasted. If you're going to spread that over 40 years it looks good on an annual basis, plus you've got a tent that you've got confidence in.

Re MM panniers etc, if you saw my bike and set up at the rally you might wonder how the hell I'd ever consider buying a high end tent when the rest of the stuff is even more low end than ex army canvas bags. It's because I've evolved the set up to work on the sort of trips I do (or hope to do) based on experience. If I could envisage circumstances where MM boxes were the best (as in best suited rather than best looking) then I'd buy them. That doesn't seem likely for me atm so I won't be beating a path to their door.

Axe!?! Sweeping the streets of Peckham must have got a bit rougher since the riots I guess!!

Certainly is a tough area! I was near there yesterday and the streets were running red! All that paint going to waste. (My son lives in New Cross and the paint came from a DIY mishap).

I must have axes rather than brooms on the brain - I spent Saturday working at an outdoor event near Kew teaching axe throwing to the public - and no, that's not a joke! Just the sort of skill that'll come in handy on a long bike trip, maybe I could do a workshop on it at the next Horizons rally

I was horrified that spent 100 quid on a Coleman tent 12 years ago,but its still going ok now has not broken or leaked and is pretty well used,probably cheap compared to a 30 quid thing that gets used 3 times before it falls apart..
There are definitely some things where it's cheaper o spend a little more,not always the most expensive but not the cheapest.
I have a petrol stove that's done me well too,survived fuel with 2 stroke oil and all sorts in it..
I've also had some complete junk that gone straight in the bin..

The answer to the unanswerable is: You get what you pay for.

Cheers
Chris
who purchases brands such as Therm-A-Rest, Trangia, VauDe, Mammut, Ajungilak etc. for extensive and rough family travel by bike and canoe and has rarely to replace or repair one of the heavily used items.

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You get what you pay for up to a point.

A £20 tent is going to be junk but will probably keep you dry until it starts falling apart.. I used a £20 for 3 years with no issue until the seams started splitting.. Value for money. HELL YEAH !!

A £100 will be fine for 99% of people if they're honest with themselves. I've got three Vango tents which all cost £100 and they're BRILLIANT.

Lightweight, well made, lots of features etc.

a £500 is not 5 times better than a £100 tent. They is only SOO much you can do to a tent to make it worth a certain price. They might weigh 0.5 kg less and have space age designs to withstand high winds but no way are they worth the price to the average ABR...

To be honest, I see just as many £500 tents leaking and breaking than I do the £100 ones.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

£20 tents are a bit like condoms - use it once and throw it away Festival fields are littered with cheap tents that people use for two or three days and just walk away from rather than pack up and take with them. For £20 it's easier just to buy a new one next time.

I used to think that it was only a summer thing though until I went to the Elephant Rally back in Feb and saw many people doing the same thing there on the Sunday morning. Just pack up in the snow and leave the tent. You could walk round and take your pick, although some were more desirable than others -




Back in August my son lived in one of my £20 tents for a week in Amsterdam until he found accommodation at the start of the university term. Considering what a hotel would have done to his student finances that tent was good value - and he hasn't even thrown it away.

It just comes down to what you can spend. Some of us have no money so it makes sense to do an overland trip with cheap equipment as opposed to staying at home. Likewise, if you can afford a solid tent, warm sleeping bag, then why not go for it?

I've been buying stuff for an overland in S.America, and have basically tried to achieve a balance between buying decent gear where it matters and keeping in budget, i.e. not spending 80 quid on a Titanium fork, but spending enough on a tent which is going to have enough room, two doors, free-standing etc,.

For example, intending to camp most of the time, I bought a brand-new Primus Omnifuel, which was relatively pricey, but then what other stoves are there at can run any fuel and weight less than 500g? Likewise, spending a bit on waterproof sacks, a decent Ortlieb rackpack and proper gortex waterproofs will go a long way when your caught in a cloudburst.