So, with eight months to go until I set off on my Three Points of the Compass walk, I collected a new purchase this evening. This has been on my radar for quite some time and I am delighted that I finally have my mitts on it!

The image above is perhaps not the most gripping, but I shall have to wait for a weekend before I am able to put it up, in the meantime, a little more information can be found here.

I went for the camo version. It is not the most military of camouflage designs thankfully, more a pleasant leafy type thing. This should give a slightly less opaque appearance and looks pretty good in my opinion. These tents, made of Dyneema Composite Fabric, formally known as Cuben Fiber, provide fantastic strength/weight/waterproofness. Another great benefit of the material is that it doesn’t stretch and sag when wet like silnylon. I still can’t get used to not calling it cuben though.

This is an expensive material and I have been saving a long time for this tent. There are smaller, single person tents available from Z Packs but I purchased the larger two man tent as I will be living in this space for many nights and possibly wet days, so it has to be a usable space. The tent as purchased comprises fly (tarp), sewn in bathtub ground sheet, doors on each side, insect screens each side of living space and guys, but excludes pegs and poles (the tent is erected using my two walking poles as support).

In its cuben stuff sack it weighs 626g. However I will be changing out the supplied stuff sack and carrying mine in a long thin cuben dry bag from Z Packs which puts the weight up to 637g. That’ll do nicely thank you.

Can’t wait to try it out…