Travel kit review: Kathmandu Retreat 270 tent

Kathmandu's Retreat 270 tent. Photo / Supplied

Just how far should a tent pole bend?

That's the question I pondered at 2am on Waitangi Day as dramatic wind gusts blasted up from the southwest, hooking over the nearby ridgeline and hammering down into the Wenderholm campground.

Like a total city mouse, I'd pitched the Kathmandu Retreat 270 tent side-on to the wind, basically creating a massive hurricane-catching spinnaker.

And we caught the hurricane.

I lay on my back, cosy on the inflatable mattress, trying to make out in the darkness just how far out of shape those poor poles were warping.

But the poles did their job. They held the line.

In the morning, we learned that three other tents in the ground had been shredded by the winds.

A family in the site next to us had woken to find rips along the side of their large marquee.

By day's end, it was in tatters.

A helpful bloke at Niwa later told me they had measured gusts of 65.5km/h around 3am at nearby Warkworth.

My own science experiment in testing the tolerance limits of the Retreat 270 continued into the afternoon, when a fresh batch of howling gusts rocketed in. Twice, the arch of the tent poles was completely inverted. That's got to hurt.

We debated pulling up the tent pegs and swinging the tent around to get it end-on into the wind. I was worried a gust would catch us midway through, relocating the tent Wizard of Oz-style out to Great Barrier Island. Like Han Solo showing false bravado about the Millennium Falcon, I was reassuring my missus that the the tent would hold together. "Hear me baby, hold together ... "

At midday, the wind peaked with an 82km/h gust. The tent poles sucked it up and moved on.

On the one hand, I was delighted to be experiencing such fantastic wind-tunnel testing conditions - after all, I had a tent review to write. On the other hand, I really didn't want the thing to actually be torn to pieces, the kids' camping holiday blown out to sea.

"It'll be best for everyone if we swing it around," reasoned Louise, as we each clung to the side of the thing. "As soon as we move it, the wind will stop."

So we did. And it did.

The Retreat 270 passed its other tests. The two main rooms are big, and there's a nifty storage area. It has handy storage pockets - a family tent can never have too many of them (ideally up high, away from kids' hands) - and there's a nifty bit of mesh material that makes for a high shelf in one of the rooms. It's such a neat idea, you could actually do with another one of them for the other room.

The pegs are long and strong and the instructions are conveniently sewn into the bag.

The bag could be bigger. All tent bags should be heaps bigger then they need to be, with straps to tighten up around the contents. Or how about including instructions on how to pack the thing.

When you're packing up after a week of baking yourself at a campsite, it can be easy to forget precisely how the contents were meant to be stowed in the bag. It took us about 25 minutes to get the tent erected. The mechanics of putting it up were simple, with the fly connecting to the frame by velcro strips. Getting it down was about a 15-minute job.

It's heavy, weighing in at 21.3kg. Which, since it's a family tent that will be pitched within a few metres of the seven-seater car that drove it to the campsite, isn't too big a burden. But you wouldn't want to be slinging this beast over your shoulders and setting off for a tramp into the wilds.

Kathmandu's Retreat 270 tent
RRP: $1099.98