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| This big green, saggy balloon is in fact a tent. |
From one tent and now onto another – whereas before space was at a premium due to the lightweight nature and design of the Terra Nova Solar Competition 1 , now I’ve evolved onto a heavier counterpart – that’s a palace in comparison.
The Terra Nova Voyager 2.2 – new for 2011.
A 4 season shelter for 2 people with a packaged weight (according to their scales, I’ve not hung them yet for a definitive figure) of 2.49 kilos. Hydrostatic head of fly and groundsheet is 5000mm, 8mm DAC Featherlite poles , repair kit, alloy pegs and a reasonable packaged size.
So, it’s somewhat more bulky and over twice the weight of the Solar Competition 1 – but it’s more roomy, versatile and durable.
We shall see…..
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| Pitching in a jungle? Nah! It’s my back garden! |
On first impression pitching it in the back garden – it seems a bloody good tent. It’s huge on the inside. Loads of room for 2 people plus gear and that’s before you consider the porch areas – which there are two.
You got the main entrance and exit where the doors and aligned fly can be folded open wide – which is excellent – and a smaller porch and corresponding door at the rear.
It’s a pitch inner first tent but it goes up quick enough – might be pain in high winds and heavy rain, though – the inner is clipped onto the tent poles and one of these slips through a couple of small sleeves for added strength and stability.
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| Mini sleeve for threading poles through – didn’t spot these until after a practice pitch |
The stuff sack is rather big but it’s likely I’ll stow the pegs and poles separately and just shove the tent itself into the bottom of my rucksack. Shouldn’t be a problem in my 45 litre pack.
I’m really quite looking forward to trying this tent out – I couldn’t quite get it pitched proper in my jungle of a small garden. But the space inside is fantastic for a 2 man tent and simply luxurious for solo use. Overkill perhaps – but there you go.
I can see me lounging around in this without a care in the world on some wild camps very, very soon…..
TERRY ABRAHAM 
Terry – quite an interesting tent. I thought about this one when looking at 4 seasons tents last year. My reason for putting it on my short list was that I could use it as a solo tent( a bit heavy), but if one of my sons came with me, there would be plenty of room. In the end I went with the Soulo , because I would be buying a tent based on the rare occasion when someone else would share a tent with me. However I think it has some fine attributes.
Mark
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This looks very nice for us actually, but at the moment our current Voyager is going strong – no justification for one!.
Apart from yourself for testing purposes, I can't see why a solo backpacker would consider it.
I wish TN would pay as much attention to their website as their tents, I've found two major inconsistencies already.
The description says: “Its two doors each with porches go down well…” and “Minimum Weight: 2.2kg, Packed Weight: 2.49kg” but the PDF datasheet says “Number of porches: 1” and “Minimum Weight: 2.10kg, Packed Weight: 2.24kg”.
I can't see any pictures at all of the second door, internal or external – looking forward to your review.
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Hi Mark. Good tent you bought, too. Very good. This Voyager 2.2 is only the same weight as most other 2 man 'lightweight' tents from other brands 😉
But the space inside is huge in comparison. Head height is great. Packs down nice and flat in bottom of ya pack. But all said and done, the devil is in the detail – we'll see after a few camps.
The last tent I was indifferent to – and I ended up loving it once I had it out in the field. So, ya never know….
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Hi Geoff,
Funnily enough I thought of you when I pitched the tent (being a Voyager user). There's so much room for two people just inside the inner alone. Aye, it's a bit much for a solo backpacker I have to admit.
But I do on the odd occasion camp out and share with friends.
As I've said to Mark, once poles are stashed away elsewhere the tent packs down very flat into the bottom of your pack.
We'll see anyway – there's some minor gripes I've spotted already but then again – they may not be. Itching to get it out on the hill…
Oh and I'll let Terra Nova know about the issues on their website. Didn't notice it myself. Like I said in the post I haven't weighed the tent yet – namely because my garage is full of crap from last weekends camping trip and I couldn't get to the scales
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wish you had getting the normal voyager after my superlite got damaged was thinking on buying the voyager they got its weight down to about 2kgs and it has sleeves which as you know I prefer lol
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Hi Paul. Well, this is a new tent for 2011 and no this doesn't have sleeves LOL
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Let me second GeofC on the website criticism. There are only two pics of this tent on their site, none (zero) of its mystery rear. No TN videos exist of any 2011 TN tent, hardly any of any TN tent ever. They welcome us to spend £450 on a tent without bothering to show us it. Tent fairs are great but not if you live in Scotland. And it's not an either/or thing, surely? This tent has been in stock for months yet they are completely ignoring the idea of telling us about it. It doesn't have to be a flashy website – content is king. A load of pictures on Flickr and a few walkround, climb-in, pitching videos on youtube would be great. The current lack of such easy-to-provide info/footage online, for products they have been selling from stock for months, is absolutely mystifying and a bit of a goodwill killer to be honest.
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Here's a page with a video of the BA Copper Spur UL2 as an example. You learn so much in 4 minutes compared to the 40 minutes I spent trying to find TN rear vestibule info.
http://www.hike-lite.co.uk/Tents/Two+Person/Copper+Spur+UL2.html
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Hi Tom,
You know – you make some fantastic points there. I'll make sure TN read your comment, mate. True and fair, to be honest.
I know it's not perhaps the answer – but you got me thinking. Every tent I get to test, I'll make a short video of it.
I thought of doing one for the Terra Nova Solar Comp 1 – and I did film some rough footage from my mobile phone – but didn't get round to editing it. Maybe I should have? I just figured my review was thorough enough you see.
So, yeah – some good points….
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Hi, yours was certainly a great review piece and of course, this review is about your reflections on how you found the tent – words are a great medium for expressing such complex things – like whether the tent grew on you. But it's true that videos are useful for more bread and butter stuff, dimensions particularly, and like seeing if the narrowness at head height when sitting impairs movement (do mention your height if you ever do videos!). The more the merrier for me (that video footage you talked of would be brill, even a rough edit thrown on youtube), though I do see there's an aesthetic choice you as a blogger have to make about what medium you want to spend hours working in. But for TN, different matter – as I say, it seems bizarre that they haven't put their own videos online. The tents are mostly really good imho, and they should be shouting about them.
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Agree, Tom 🙂 I'll get in touch with TN and put forward your points.
Perhaps the tents could do with the 'terrybnd' video treatment?
A video of the tent in varying locales on wild camps? Not some campsite or handy field next to the office 😉
Somewhere relevant to the tents likely use?
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Terry i would come along on an overnighter with you if you want someone to pitch tent etc whilst you video the action 😉
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Excellent. I'll bear that in mind, mate.
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