Finding Cheap Tents

Sometimes you don’t want a top of the range tent and something more cheap and cheerful is required. Maybe you’re attending a particularly raucous or potentially muddy festival and the grands worth of Outwell is overkill. But where is the best place to find a cheap tent?

We’ve put together a guide to places where some cheap canvas can be sniffed out.

End of season gear & sales

Tents don’t change from much from year to year. Whilst there are technological innovations and certain styles move in and out of fashion most retailers offer updates that only the biggest of tent geeks will pick up upon.

Equally with the outlook looking glum for many retailers we have seen end of season sales started mid-season.

A good cause and a free tent!

Want something better than cheap? It’s possible to find tents for free if you look in the right places.

One of the great scandals of modern festivals is the shocking abandonment of tents. With modern tents relatively cheap it’s too easy to simply walk away than pack down a muddy, booze soaked tent and who cares about that airbed and camping chair?

On the brighter side festivals do invite charities into collect tents but they can only ever take a fraction of the abandoned tents. This is where you step in, festivals will usually open the gates on the final Monday and in the case of Glastonbury see bargain hunters descend like lochusts.

But like the stag beetle than clears poo from the plains you’ll be doing the countryside a service and catching yourself a bargain in the process.

Auctions and Classified

Auction sites like eBay and Gumtree offer a huge range of cheap tents, and if you scourer the listings you can get some real bargains. Just flicking through the local London classifieds finds tents going for a fraction of their asking price.

Equally Freecycle allows people to offer their unwanted good for free, though in this writers experience the bargain hunters can be a little picky when receiving the free goods!