Lone Rider MotoTent review | Space to park the bike inside but bulky to carry

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Choosing the right tent for motorcycle travel is all about compromises, and making a trade-off between pack size, weight and practicality. My personal preference is to keep things small, and I’d usually pick a low profile, two-man design intended for hiking.

They don’t take up much space, are durable enough for rough weather and can be erected in minutes. As a consequence though, they tend to be fairly tiny inside with just enough headroom for sitting cross legged if you’re lucky.

Lone Rider’s MotoTent, on the other hand, has been specifically engineered for adventure bikers and boasts not just the space for a six footer to stand comfortably, but enough room to park your motorcycle in it too. I’ve tried it with a CFMoto 800MT, Triumph Sprint ST and BMW R1250GSA, and provided you take the top box off, they fit right in.

Being able to keep your bike undercover gives great peace of mind, and it’s also rather reassuring to make out its silhouette in the next ‘room’ in the middle of a moonlit night. Should you need to make any running repairs it makes an effective temporary garage with shelter from the elements and enough elbow room for intense spannering. It can be opened up on all three sides, so no need for tricky manoeuvring in or out.

The sleeping area is surprisingly capacious too and will easily fit two people and their personal kit. It has two doors into the living room/garage, as well as one on the opposite side, so you can nip off to answer a call of nature without disturbing your riding buddy.

Both the inner tent and flysheet pack together, so a successful erection can be comfortably achieved in less than 10 minutes. The sturdy support poles are colour coded and can only be inserted from one end, and the neatly designed aluminium pegs would take a huge effort to bend.

So where are the compromises? Well, firstly there’s the pack size. Our example measures 67 cm long by 26 cm across and weighs 6.5 kg, which, if you’re looking to keep mass centralised and load balanced, essentially makes it a back seat passenger.

And then there is a question of practicality – yes, it’s great to be able to get dressed standing up or park your bike inside, but there’s an awful lot of material to catch the wind and with only four guy lines it’s difficult to keep the structure taught. Ours actually caught a gust with two of the main doors open and ripped off a peg loop.

The MotoTent offers a touch of luxury that could prove vital if you’re sick on the road or need to fix a broken bike, but it does take up valuable real estate which could leave you unprepared for something else. For my money, I’d pack smaller and take more.

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