We're off across the Channel in a few weeks on a bike packing excursion and taking bivi bags and a tarp. We'll be wild camping for most of the trip but would, obviously, like the odd shower and opportunity to charge up camera batteries and phones, so would be looking to spend a night or two at a campsite along the way.

Now, having got into trouble in the past at Gallic campsites (both municipal & private) for such heinous crimes as sleeping outside the tent rather than in it and using the swimming pool in surf shorts and not muncipal regulation budgie smugglers, I was wondering whether we'd get away with pitching a tarp on our emplacment in place of a tent or whether we be abruptly marched to the gates and roughly evicted ?


Anyone have any experience? I'm sure I could pitch my tarp to look like a tent with a bit of practice but the two upturned bikes in place of tent poles might just give the game away :?

What size tarp Rich?

My Alpkit bicycle 7, so 2.8 x 2.4 metres.

i've not had any trouble but i've only done it a few times (and another few times with a hammock/tarp set-up) in the Ardeche (no idea about other departments).

My Alpkit bicycle 7, so 2.8 x 2.4 metres.

The only way I can see you erecting it with bike/wheels and keeping some kind of 'tent' shape is a standard A frame with a fairly low pitch height. I suppose if you use the rigs mid guy points then you'll still retain a certain amount of internal space.

Maybe you could add to the tent illusion by knocking up a simple extended beak for one end (the end the public see). Simple triangle with a clip at the top, a pegging point in each corner and one in the centre should do it.

Cheers guys,

I'm sure that we'll possibly find some small rural villge/municipal campsite where it'll be allright. I've certainly stayed at a few in the past where no one's come around to collect the money or some summer job student's turned up in the morning to do the honours, although a lot of campsites might have shut for the season when we roll by in mid September.

Anyway, I always need something to worry about before an overseas excursion (it's usually a morbid fear of my disc brakes cooking halfway down some steep alpine pass). If getting told off for pitching a tarp's all I've got troubling me this time then I'm obviously getting less insecure as I slide into my twilight years ;-)