I turned my car boot into a hotel on wheels with Aldi’s £69.99 camping tent – but some ‘snooty’ campsites won’t accept ‘downmarket’ tourists who bring them
The boot is the unsung workhorse of any car, a rarely admired, perennially useful space that sees everything from holiday cases to bags of shopping and garden waste flung in and out of it.
Now though, I’m taking a long, hard, quizzical look at it, wondering how the hell its latest role, as a makeshift bedroom, is going to work.
Aldi‘s new £69.99 car camping tent is writing cheques I’m not sure it can cash, claiming to snuggle up to the rear of any SUV and transform it into a campervan, with a roomy additional canvas area and awning.
A £19.99 inflatable mattress, designed to fit around wheel arches when the rear passengers seats are laid flat, supposedly makes this boot bedroom an altogether more comfortable affair.
When your car keys and your bed for the night are the same thing: Jo pictured testing out Aldi’s £69.99 car tent
UK car campers are growing in popularity but remain a relatively rare breed on the nation’s campsites – apparently, there’s a little snootiness from some site owners about whether sleeping in the back of your car is, in fact, a downmarket pursuit.
On social media, enthusiastic converts have shared lists of where you will and won’t be welcomed.
Beyond designated sites, the rules on where you can and can’t car camp are still evolving. In England, you may well get away with free nights on rural lay-bys, or cheap spots in National Parks that offer overnight parking – although prior permission is likely needed for the latter.
Scotland’s wild camping laws make it a more relaxed affair north of the border, provided you ‘leave no trace’ and stick to just a few nights.
Before being initiated into the nuances of the camping hierarchy, where Regatta-wearing traditionalists with high quality tents and the skills to cook up an English breakfast on a Primus stove trump all others – because campervans and glamping are cheating, right? – I had assumed I could just book any old site.
Car camping is on the rise and the budget German supermarket has seen its car tents flying off the shelves
A £19.99 inflatable mattress fits snuggly around the wheel arches, transforming the boot into a small double bed
A friend recommended Marsh Farm, a small, pretty site half-an-hour from Stonehenge in Wiltshire and I booked a £28-a-night pitch online, later calling to clarify the booking would still stand after reading about the no-go list.
Catherine, Marsh Farm’s jolly owner, admitted she’d never played host to a car camper before but was happy to let my ageing Land Rover, with a supermarket tent billowing behind it, sit alongside the purists – and her small gaggle of shepherd’s huts, bell tents and campervan pitches.
On a gorgeous April afternoon, I roll onto the site – with my 14-year-old daughter a (just about) willing accessory to this potential crime against camping.
As we set up, I sense a little quiet scrutiny from the couple seated beside their campervan next door and hope that, in this moderate breeze, we don’t flunk it and end up with a giant kite on our hands.
The tent stands alone – otherwise you’d never be able to go anywhere – and is surprisingly easy to erect, with an elasticated hood gripping the open boot of the car, further secured with straps that hook behind the rear wheels as well as some – deeply conventional – guy ropes and pegs.
The tent hooks over the boot via an elasticated hood and claims to fit most SUVs
It feels a little flimsier than those I’ve put up in the past – but for £70, I suspect it’s designed to be more of a short-term novelty than a tent for life.
The mattress comes with a car inflation kit, and is blown up in seconds. It lays neatly in place across the boot and, with the duvet, pillows and sheet I’d dragged off my bed from home, we have, ta da, a room for the night.
Our bags and cases fit in the exterior tent, dry and sheltered, and we sit on camping chairs under the awning that extends out.
The one potential gremlin? The boot lights on my Discovery Sport automatically light up when it’s open…and I fear the battery drain if we leave it that way til morning.
A YouTube video tutorial or two later, and I poke a screwdriver into the boot clasp, tricking it into thinking it’s closed, and darkness descends.
The rest of the evening plays out as any camping night would – we hire a firepit for £2, drink tea, buy chocolate from the tiny honesty box shop, and marvel at Wiltshire’s celestial starry night.
A view from a boot: There was a decent panoramic of the Wiltshire countryside from the back window
Still something of an outlier in the world of camping, car tents are increasing in popularity though
The million dollar question. How was the actual sleep? Honestly, a little fitful… the interior roof of the car felt closer than I’d imagined, and it took a while to get used to the penned-in feeling.
I definitely wasn’t uncomfortable…but I was pretty chilly, and reached for additional layers of clothing before midnight.
The rules of insulation mean the metal and glass on a vehicle can leave it colder than a double-skinned tent – but it does negate wind chill more easily.
The wise teenager – ‘Mum, I’m doing D of E silver…’ – slept in a thermal sleeping bag under the duvet so had a far better night’s kip than I did.
We pack up just as easily as we unpacked – with the tent folding into a easily portable waterproof bag.
Would I go car camping again? I think so – but it’s purely a summer pursuit for this lily-livered tourist.
