Last year I bought a roof tent from Alpkit (review here). I love it. It’s been brilliant and I’ve had some really fun times in it. However about 6 weeks ago disaster struck. My car was parked outside my house as usual, with the roof tent mounted on the bars. I woke one morning in torrential rain to find that the cover wasn’t on it.
The cover is a heavy duty waterproof box-shaped construction with a thick Velcro strap encircling the whole thing. It’s pretty difficult to take off. There’s no way it had come off whilst driving. Had it? Surely not, but the seed of doubt was there. I figured maybe it had been some kids having a laugh and searched the local woods in the deluge looking for it as they surely wouldn’t have kept it once they’d taken it off. No luck.
So I accepted that by a million to one chance it had come off whilst driving, though this seemed wholly unlikely, or more likely, that some toerag had stolen it. It’s hard to imagine that somebody with the same tent would steal it to replace their equivalent as a) there aren’t many Alpkit ones about, and b) that person would know just how irritating it would be to wake up without one!
Over the past 6 weeks I’ve been back and forth with Alpkit who have tried to help me out, but ultimately, we’d not managed. It’s now an old model so the new covers don’t fit, and it’s not possible to recreate it. Bugger.
Then on Friday last week I look out my office window (I work from home) and see this:
That’s my car in the background with the roof tent on with no cover. And in the foreground is a van with an Alpkit roof tent cover on, but with no roof tent. Could it be? Surely not!
I hastily wrote a note explaining my situation / predicament and popped it on the van windscreen. An hour later I heard the engine start and hot footed it outside to see the van driving off down the road. I cursed. Quite a lot. Human beings in general for being such arses.
I went back into the house and ranted a bit before getting on with what I had been doing. Then my phone rang. It was the owner of the van. He’d read my message. He’d bought the cover from a car boot sale a few miles down the road about 6 weeks ago. He was totally sympathetic and said ‘that’s not what camping people do to one another’, before then offering to bring it back to me.
He’s just turned up with the cover, which fits like a glove. I am 100% convinced it is my cover. I asked him how much he had paid for it. £20. I gave him £20. It seemed the decent thing to do. Some of my friends in the pub were cynical that he had nicked it in the first place, and was sensing an opportunity to make some money. Having met him I am totally convinced that he was just doing the right thing and returning it.
I shall be tying the cover to the roof tent with some zip ties in future! I’ve also cleaned my office windows 😉
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