On the Road with bc: The ORTLIEB Factory Tour. ...
Andi visited the bicycle bag specialist ORTLIEB in Heilsbronn. A factory tour and a bike overnighter were on the agenda.
A tent allows you to carry your home with you when bikepacking. Small pack size or low weight? Here’s what matters when choosing a tent for cycling tours.
Tents are the ultimate in terms of sleeping solutions while camping. The right tent means you’ll always have your home with you, even on a bikepacking tour or cycling trip. Tents are the optimal choice for weather protection against rain, storms or sand, offering privacy, mosquito netting and a lot of comfort while resting with little weight or a small pack size. Our buying guide shows you what to look for when shopping.
From festivals to arctic expeditions, there are tents for every conceivable need. On a bikepacking tour or cycling trip, however, a tent has to meet different criteria than at Glastonbury or the South Pole. That's why, when selecting our range, we made sure to offer you tents that work really well on your cycling adventure and still offer enough all-round utility for hiking or other tours.
Tents with a small pack size are easy to stow. You can use the extra space for other things, or you can spare an additional bag on your bike. © bc GmbH
There are three basic construction principles for tents with certain advantages and disadvantages. There are also hybrid tents. However, not all tent designs are suitable for bikepacking. Even so, we’re going to go over everything for the sake of completion. Almost all tents have one thing in common: they are double-walled. The outer tent is waterproof and protects against rain, wind and snow. Underneath is an inner tent made of thin, breathable mesh fabric that protects you from mosquitoes and insects. The double-wall construction ensures, among other things, that moisture in the tent such as air, perspiration, ambient or ground moisture (e.g. if you are camping close to a body of water) only condenses on the outer tent and your inner tent stays nice and dry.
In addition to the actual living space, many tents also have an anteroom for luggage, the so-called vestibule. A vestibule does not have an inner tent and is ideal for things that need to be kept waterproof and safe overnight, but which you do not want to bring into the inner tent, such as bike shoes.
Your tent should be waterproof. That much is clear. Basically, there are two principles to achieve this. On the one hand you have a waterproof coating with a polyurethane (PU) layer. On the other hand you have siliconisation.
The waterproof ability of tent fabrics is usually specified – analogous to rainwear – as a water column in millimetres. The water column is a standardised measurement of pressure which water exerts atop a given surface. The number indicates up to what column height a certain material is waterproof, which is not without controversy in the outdoor world since it ignores various environmental factors. Two different water columns are usually specified for a tent. One is the water column for the tent’s floor. Since your body weight exerts a lot of pressure on the material, such as kneeling on the tent floor, this value should be higher than for the outer tent. With a water column of 5,000 millimetres, you are on the safe side for the groundsheet; for the flysheet, values of around 3,000 millimetres are usual and sufficient, because no specific point forces the water through the material.
The size of a tent is usually indicated by an estimate of how many people it can accommodate. In most cases, you can choose from a one-, two- or three-person tent. The interior length, width and height are of course more precise and can be found in the product descriptions. In addition to your body measurements, you can also use the length and width of your camping mat and sleeping bag as a guide.
A one-person tent offers flexibility on solo tours and saves you the trouble of hauling excess luggage. As a compromise, you can use a tent that offers (limited) space for two people in extreme cases and serves as a comfortable one-person tent when you’re traveling alone. For bikepacking, tents for up to two people have become popular because of their compact pack size. Larger tents are an advantage in worst-case scenarios, such as if you have to ride out bouts of harsh weather over multiple days. In addition, you can divide its parts among multiple people. For example, one person would then carry the poles in a frame bag and a second would carry the inner and outer tents in a handlebar roll. Otherwise, larger three- or multi-person tents are usually too big for bikepacking. Smaller tents also offer you more peace and privacy after an arduous day in the saddle.
Tip: Your tent should always be long enough so that your sleeping bag does not press the inner tent against the outer tent and get wet from the condensation that collects there. That can cost you heat. Read more in our buying guide for sleeping bags.
Among extreme bikepackers, tent alternatives such as tarps, bivy sacks and hammocks – or a combination thereof – are also popular because of their (theoretically) lower weight, higher flexibility and (in Germany) legal use for camping. What all items have in common, however, is the loss of visual protection – and thus privacy – as well as reduced weather protection. Tents are therefore unbeatable as all-rounders.
Tip: If you add the weight and pack size of a tarp to that of a bivy sack or hammock, the result is usually not much lighter or more compact than a tent. The tent is and remains a nearly-perfect all-rounder, while the bivy sack, hammock and tarp are a special choice for rugged individualists.
With proper care, high-quality tents are dependable companions for many years. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind on the road and at home.
On the road:
At home:
Have you found the perfect tent for your needs? Congratulations! Before setting off on an adventure, bear in mind that wilderness camping is almost always forbidden in Germany, while using a bivy sac, i.e. a night in the open air without special structures, is usually tolerated. However, the legal definition of camping is complicated, can vary from one state to another and can be entirely different in neighbouring states. Nature reserves and national parks should generally be off-limits because of their importance for nature conservation. We have compiled a code of conduct for respectful treatment of nature when bikepacking here.