>>302398>but eventually I gave up and found a room at a B&B nearby.Jesus, anon. What the fuck.
Use a damn rock to hammer the stakes into the ground. No rocks visible? Look harder. The Earth is made of these things. You may have to dig.
If the tent is freestanding, then don't even bother with stakes. The tent in your picture needs exactly ZERO stakes to hold its pitch. Put your gear inside, and it won't go anywhere in normal wind.
Use rocks to hold down guy-out points. Tie guylines to large rocks or to piles of small rocks, or use trees. No rocks or trees around? Bushes, then.
Worst case scenario, you had your bike with you, so you could have just biked to a better field with softer soil or more trees. I have been camping since I was a little kid, and visited a wide variety of terrains. The above methods have never failed me once. The only situation where I've ever had trouble is those campgrounds where you're required to camp on a gravel pad, or worse: a concrete pad or wooden planks. However, even there, you can generally jerry-rig something to make it work (although the better solution is to just ring a free-standing tent if you know you'll be camping on a concrete pad).
