I bought the tent over the weekend and I'm really quite impressed with it, it's up in the garden right now as a trial run and it was easy to pitch, even on my own.

I've been doing some sums this afternoon to see what sort of savings I can reasonably expect to make:

I'm working on a project that I can expect to be based at for the next couple of years. The office is 72 miles away from my house.

If I drove to the office and back every day I would clock up 720 miles per week.

If I achieved 45mpg on that run* it would, at current prices, cost almost exactly 10p to travel 1 mile resulting in a £72 weekly fuel bill.

Now, if I used the tent on a Monday night and a Thursday night I could lose two round trips (288 miles) and if I worked from home on a Wednesday** I could knock off a further 144 miles. I could quite easily drop from 720 miles per week to 288 miles per week.

That would reduce the fuel bill from £72 to £28.80 per week. Even allowing £5 per night for camping fees I could save £33 per week or £132 per month, £1584 per year.

That is all very good for my pocket but there is also an environmental factor to consider:

My car emits 154 grams of Carbon Dioxide for every kilometre I drive, a weekly saving of 432 miles translates to 695 kilometres, that means that I could emit 107.3kg less CO2 each week by altering my routine, that is 1,287.6kg of CO2 per year.

* I can get more mpg than this if I try but 45mpg is about right for a fast drive on a mixture of roads.

** That's quite reasonable as I'll be able to work longer hours on the other days because I won't have to commute.