I feel I’ve come of age. Guillaume and I are the proud owners of a two-second tent. Not that it’s doing us much good at the moment, but in summer the possibilities were endless! For those who are not yet familiar with the two-second tent, it’s the better-than-sliced-bread invention of French brand Quechua, a self-assembling tent that takes shape in two seconds (or one-second for the one-person model, three-seconds for three people). All that’s left for the now happy camper is to hammer in the pegs.

Here are some videos which aptly convey all that is about a two-second tent:

In theory… (followed by the real-life application!)

On the first rung of the passage to becoming landed gentry, be felt like absolute lords of the campsite on the first unveiling of our new two-second tent. Not that it was unique in any way, we were surrounded by a field of one-, two- and three-second tents, but because no one else in Guillaume’s family had one. This gave us an extra fifteen minutes to loll around, and add this to an evening of camping sloth and an early night, yep… we felt pretty content with ourselves.

The test run didn’t go so well though – Guillaume managed to launch it into his face when practising in the garden at home…

The tent meets all water-proof requirements too. We decided to go camping in the rain-renowned Bretagne (Brittany) in August, and a soggy affair it was too. Camped near the megaliths at Carnac, the tent was tested in epic proportions for it poured, dripped and sprinkled (the former being of the most frequent occurrence) for the three days that we tried desperately to hold out. That the tent remained reasonably dry was of little consolation, for everything else was sodden, squelching and smelly.