Make a Minimalist Tarp Shelter for Wild Camping

Start With the Cloth and the Cut

A tarp is the simplest shelter you can make, and the cheapest way into wild camping without carrying a tent. For one person, a finished size of around 3 m x 2.5 m gives you a proper A-frame with room to sit up under the ridgeline. For two, go to 3 m x 3 m. Any bigger and you are carrying weight you will not use.

For fabric, a 20D siliconised polyester around 55–60 gsm is the sweet spot: it does not sag badly when wet the way silnylon can, it packs small, and it sews well if you are patient. If this is your first tarp, buy a cheap PU-coated polyester ripstop to practise on — you will make mistakes on the hems, and it is better to make them on £4 a metre cloth than on the good stuff. You will need roughly 4 m of 150 cm wide fabric, plus a little extra for tie-outs.

Lay the cloth out flat indoors, on a clean floor or a big table. Mark your rectangle with a marker and a long straight edge. If you want catenary curves along the ridgeline edges — and you should, if you are sewing on a machine that can manage it — mark a shallow curve that dips about 5 cm at the centre of each long edge. This is what stops the tarp flapping when you pitch it tight.

Sewing a Hem That Survives Wind

A tarp lives or dies by its hems. Cut with sharp scissors or a hot knife, then fold a double rolled hem: 10 mm, folded twice, so the raw edge is buried inside. Pin or clip as you go — clips are far easier than pins on slippery fabric.

• Use a microtex or sharp needle, size 80/12.
• Polyester thread, not cotton. Cotton rots and stretches.
• Stitch length around 3 mm. Long stitches pucker; short ones perforate.
• Sew slowly and let the machine feed the fabric. Pulling it will wave the hem.

Do the two long edges first, then the short edges, and leave the four corners until the reinforcement stage. If the fabric is very slippery, a strip of masking tape along the fold line keeps things honest, though you must remove it before anyone sees it.

Reinforced Tie-Outs: The Bit That Matters

Every tarp failure I have seen has been a tie-out tearing out, not a seam splitting. Fix that with proper reinforcement.

• Cut 8 pieces of 25 mm grosgrain ribbon, about 12 cm long.
• Fold each into a loop and stitch it firmly to the hem, catching the hem stitching as you go.
• Add a triangular patch of the same fabric, or a square of 70D ripstop, over the top of the loop on the underside. This spreads the load across a wider area.
• Sew three rows of stitching across the reinforcement, and finish with a bar tack at the loop base.

Place tie-outs at all four corners, at the mid-points of the two long edges, and — if you have the fabric — at the ends of the ridgeline. Eight is usually enough. Once sewn, seal the stitching on the underside with silicone seam sealant. Do this outdoors or in a ventilated space, and give it 24 hours.

Guy Lines and Tensioners

Use 2 mm low-stretch cord, cut to about 2.5 m for the corners and 1.5 m for the mid-points. Attach each line to its tie-out with a lark's head, so it can be removed or swapped without cutting.

For adjustment, either tie a taut-line hitch, or fit a small plastic cord tensioner. Tensioners are faster with cold hands and worth the few grams. Tie a small figure-of-eight in the free end of each line to stop it pulling through the tensioner. Keep the lines attached to the tarp and stuff the whole thing into a stuff sack — separate lines get lost, and a lost line at dusk on a hillside is a miserable thing.

Pitching It and Using It

The classic A-frame needs two poles, two trees, or two trekking poles lashed together. Pitch the ridgeline into the wind and keep the tarp low — the lower the edge, the less wind gets under it. A lean-to pitch, with one edge pegged to the ground and the other lifted, is quicker but gives you less protection from driving rain.

In England and Wales, wild camping is generally only lawful with the landowner's permission, so know where you are and who owns it. Scotland's access code is far more permissive, but it still asks you to camp in small numbers, away from buildings and roads, and to leave no trace. Pitch late, leave early, and take everything out with you.

Sew one of these, pitch it in the garden on a wet night, and you will learn more about shelter than any amount of reading. Then go and use it properly.