The Vaude Hogan Ultralight Stormproof tents have performed almost flawlessly for three years of regular touring use. The design is very well suited to a solo cycle tourer or a cosy couple, with a couple of minor drawbacks, which we’ll come to later.

Water resistance is, as you’d expect from a European tent, top-notch. The tents haven’t let a drop of water in, even when being assembled in a downpour when the inner tent has been splashed with water. The packed weight is low, even when the tent has been put up in the wet and rained on all night, but it’s a little higher than the manufacturers make out — a touch above 2kg by my scales. The flysheet sheds water very well and droplets bead off very quickly with a few shakes.

The v-profile pegs are strong, but not the strongest. Make sure you plant them fully if possible, as otherwise you WILL tread on and consequently bend them in the dark and/or sleepy daze that you will inevitably find yourself in a some point.

The size is perfect for a solo cycle tourer — you have enough space for your panniers, clothes, books and yourself on the inside, and any excess baggage in the porch. For two people, don’t expect to get more than the essentials and valuables inside the tent as well as 2 humans, unless one or both of you are particularly short! This is where the relatively small porch might be a problem if you’re paranoid about security — you’ll probably have to leave some of your luggage outside, although we do this routinely and nothing has been pinched so far. Besides, a potential thief is probably more interested in your bike, and you won’t be getting that inside the tent in a hurry.

As for build quality, again this is very high, as you would expect for a tent of this price. The tent doesn’t seem to suffer from being packed and stored for a day while wet, which some other manufacturers’ ultralight tents won’t withstand. On a tour in wet weather it’s often impractical or impossible to dry out a tent every day, and you don’t want to have to worry that the flysheet coating will disintegrate. Another plus point for Vaude.

In high winds, the designers cleverly included a number of measures to stop various parts of the tent blowing away. In the event of pitching in high winds, you begin by planting the single peg at the rear of the tent, which should be facing into the wind for aerodynamics. The separate groundsheet is attached to each peg loop of the inner tent by velcro, thus connecting them securely together. Once these two are hooked to the rear peg, you can peg out the remaining corners and assemble the poles. The flysheet clips again to the inner tent at the rear by means of a plastic locking connector, so the wind is effectively blowing all parts of the tent in the same direction. You can then clip it into the other connectors at the front of the tent before pegging out the sides and the porch. This can all be done by one person — with a bit of practice of course!

Extra measures for really heavy storms include internal velcro straps to secure the flysheet to the poles and 4 external guy-lines. It would take a hurricane to uproot this thing. Just pray that the border police don’t turn up at that moment to bundle you and your bikes and kit into a van, like they did to us in September 2007…

This being an ultralight tent, the materials simply aren’t going to be as durable as heavier tents. Over the three years we’ve been using the tents, we’ve had both sets of poles snap at the joints through fatigue, and the flysheets have shrunk a little, making pegging the sides out quite difficult in loose ground. (Vaude know that the ultralight poles have a limited life and supply a repair sleeve which can splint a broken joint in an emergency — this works very well.)

The taped seams in the corners of the groundsheet have split a little from repeated stuffing into the sack after packing. The zips suffered in the dusty deserts and the sliders wore out, but this was fixed by compressing the sliders gently with a pair of pliers. In the long term, zip care becomes an issue, and it’s worth looking at silicon lubricant sprays — although a bar of soap run along the coil works in a pinch.

If you’re doing a lot of wild camping and want to be inconspicuous, the colour of the flysheet is about as perfect as you will ever find on the market. The shade of green chosen by Vaude for the Hogan Ultralight, and others in the range, is a fantastically natural one, which really does blend in. If only all tent manufacturers had this as an option!

In summary, this would be a perfect ultralight tent for a long tour if it were truly freestanding. However, the real-life situations in which this shortcoming has actually caused a problem so far total zero. In the long term, as with all ultralight solutions, durability becomes an issue, but you already knew that…

• Watch a short video from Mongolia featuring the Vaude Hogan Ultralight tents