Where there are no tables and chairs, or when you simply need to sit your weary booty on the ground – a picnic rug is a great option. After all, the ground can sometimes not be pleasant to sit on, maybe it’s wet, dirty or insect-ridden. This is where our tent groundsheet comes into play!
We use our tent groundsheet as a picnic blanket every single day during lunch, keeping insects from our food, but also if it’s too hot to ride, we snooze on it! It is kept separate from the rest of the tent at the very top of our front pannier for easy access. We have a few pegs handy so that if it is windy, we can keep it down.
A tent groundsheet is great for your tent too. It adds a waterproof layer to the base of your tent, it keeps your tent inner clean, it protects the tent inner from sharp rocks on the ground and allows you to pitch your freestanding tent with just the poles and the fly.
We have also heard of others using the tent groundsheet as you would a tarp – protecting you from wind and water. Please let us know if you have any other uses for a tent groundsheet.
Great idea to do multi-purpose!
We did the otherway around – we used a car windscreen sun-cover as our picnic blanket, and also as a tent groundsheet on hard surfaces.
However, we tend to use now an extra tent groundsheet, and a separate picnic sheet.
We lay our picnic sheet in front of the tent, and put all stuff there before packing into the tent in the evening, and the next morning when we leave, we also collect all stuff there, before mounting them on the bike. So our picnic sheet is the first to go, and the last to go.
The alu-layer adds heat isolation.
http://media.betterware.co.uk/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/0/3/035641.jpg
You could share some more ideas about multi-use on bicycle tours. I’m looking into tips to find multiple uses for items, so I can unclutter our touring gear a bit further.
If any moderate-to-major repairs are needed on the go, small parts are easy to lose, & if you lose some parts, it could ruin a ride. So, spreading out a groundsheet & repairing on top of that might be very worthwhile.
Good idea!