Hire a Rooftop Tent

In short, yes! Many respected outdoor equipment manufacturers such as the Swedish brand Thule have been marketing rooftop tents for years, though they are still quite a rare sight in the UK. Thule’s website talks about how rooftop tents are safe to use on cars.

Thousands of customers have hired thousands of roof tents without problem, but the science goes something like this.

Most vehicle maufacturers quote a dynamic weight limit for the roof load. This is usually 75kg (but please always check the value for your vehicle).

This is how much you can put on your roof when driving, including cornering, braking and driving over rough surfaces. These driving conditions multiply the strain on your roof because that 75kg is being moved around, putting extra load on the roofbars and the roof itself.

This is why the dynamic weight limit is quite low at, say, 75kg, even though car roofs are immensly strong. The roof has to withstand the enormous forces involved in road traffic accidents if the vehicle were to roll over. A car can balance on its roof without the roof collapsing.

When you are parked up and you climb into your rooftop tent, it is a static weight. Your car will have a much higher static weight limit for its roof, perhaps 5x or more the dynamic weight limit. This is because your vehicle isn’t moving, and so the roof and all the roofbar fixings only have to deal with the stationary weight of the tent and its occupants. Because you don’t drive around with people in the roof tent, you only have to make sure that the empty tent is light enough for the dynamic weight rating of your roof & roofbars.

To return to Thule as an example, they sell a 4-person roof tent with a total static weight when occupied of over 350kg, but they only ask that your vehicle roof’s  dynamic load rating is 75kg to use that same tent.

All our tents weigh under 62kg, and all our roofbars are rated at 75kg dynamic load. So as long as your vehicle’s roof has a maximum dynamic load of 75kg or more, we can safely fit any of our roof tents to your car.

If your vehicle has a lower limit of 50kg for its roof, we can still hire you our 2-berth “Earhart” roof tent as that is light enough for your vehicle. Sorry, we don’t have any suitable roof tents for cars with dynamic roof limits of under 50kg.

We are based in Hawkshead village in the heart of the Lake District National Park. Bring your own car and we will fit the tent for you. When your holiday is over, we’ll handle removing if from your car.

The standard collection time is between 4pm and 6pm on the first day of your hire. Want to collect earlier? We can offer early collection from 9am at a charge of ½ day’s hire.

The standard return time is between 9am and midday on the last day of your hire. Want to return later? We can offer return until 6pm at a charge of ½ day’s hire. We find this option is especially useful for people who are touring farther afield and who do not want to rush back for the morning return time.

We will fit the rooftop tent to your vehicle at the start of your hire and we will take it off at the end. It should take us less than 30 minutes to fit your tent, and it will take us about the same time to remove it.

We are located in Hawkshead village, so there are plenty of tourist attractions and shops right next door for you to visit whilst we get to work (depending on their opening times, of course).

The tent attaches to the roofbars of your vehicle. If you don’t have any, we can hire you a set of Thule roofbars for a flat rate of £30 for the duration of your tent hire. Our stock of roofbars should fit almost any car – just let us know what vehicle you have and we will take care of the rest.

If you hire our roofbars, we’ll fit & remove those for you too. Please allow an extra 10 minutes or so.

You can open even the largest of our rooftop tents in around 5 minutes, or even quicker if there are two of you. Our hardtop tent, Mallory, is especially fast. It opens in less than a minute and then you just need to extend the telescopic ladder. 

All our rooftop tents come with a lightweight aluminium telescopic ladder. When you collect your tent from us, we will show you how to adjust this ladder to match the height of your vehicle.

The ladder slopes toward the tent and you only have to climb a few rungs before you’re in. If you can climb a small stepladder, you’ll be happy climbing into our rooftop tents.

You can set up your roof tent anywhere that camping is allowed. You have a choice of thousands of campsites around the UK, especially in national parks, or you can use any designated parking area that allows camping.

You are welcome to take the tent anywhere within the UK during your hire – many customers collect their tent from us and then travel onward to Scotland for example. Others take advantage of the beauty of the Lake District and camp in the National Park.