Its our three month 'birthday'

[martinjdover]

Happy three months to the group.

I well remember that mad dash up to the middle of Scotland on a Friday afternoon to nab the Apollo I had seen in an on-line advert. At that point we had only seen them in pictures but had decided that roof tents were not the way we had wanted to go. This was a real try before you buy cheapy (only £3500 which I sold two years later after doing minimal work for £4500). As our two years with the Apollo were very successful ordering our new "special build" demountable was an easy choice and we have had no regrets so far!
Only real issue for us with the hard-wall demountable is that of height - I can't do some of the off-roading I want to do as I'm too high at 3.0 metres. So Strata Florida in mid Wales, for example, is impossible due to the low trees. Luckily when loaded up I haven't been confronted with anything I cant get past - yet!
We discounted a pop-top early on as storage was more limited and it would be a lot noisier than a hard-wall when windy. Their lower profile would be very useful though.
We also considered the Azalai Defender 130 conversion but you then don't have the flexibility and usefulness of a pick-up.

Are there any pop-tops owners on this site?

Martin

[rubberrat]

Hard side, but owned a number of pop-top VW's in the past and I like the concept. Where that doesn't work for me on a demountable is being able to use the bed with the roof in the down position. having been out camping in full gales before, its nice to pull the roof down and 'batten down the hatches' and still be able to sleep.
I looked at one at Niche Marketing - a Northstar for a LR130. Nice, but not for me.

Then again, we did have to change our route on our last Eurotour more than once because of height issues, and we did get caught between olive trees on a dirt track in Southern Greece that a pop-top would have got us through. So horses for courses I guess.