Slow Living Travel UK

Travel || How to Camp in the Scottish Highlands

loch leven camping

Last week, Sam and I came back from an absolutely wonderful week-long trip to the Scottish Highlands. I fell head-over-heels with the area and I can’t wait to go back again in the future. Sam, Harold and I ended up doing about half of the North Coast 500, so we definitely have to finish the rest.  You can’t really get a more low-key, slow-travel, minimal environment damaging way to travel than camping in the UK.

How to Camp in the Scottish Highlands

1. Give yourself a lot longer to get from place to place than you think. 

A lot of our drives we thought were going to be quick-ish 90 minute jaunts. But because of the distortion of the map, some things were a lot further away than they looked. When you couple that with the fact that a lot of the roads are single track roads with travel going both ways, you end up spending at least 2 hours in various passing places. And then if you end up driving some of the extremely steep, hairpin turn routes, your driving estimates get completely blown out of the water. (We accidentally ended up on the Bealach Na Ba aka one of the most dangerous roads in the world so that was fun.)

2. Bring proper kit 

Sam and I have the Eurohike Cairns 5 Deluxe Tent. So it’s a much bigger tent than two people need, but with two people, a tiny but boisterous dog and a lot of our gear it was the perfect fit. I’m so glad that we didn’t bring a 2 man tent. Though it might have made getting set up a tiny bit easier. (Though by the end of the week, we could get our tent completely unpacked, up and staked in about 20 minutes.)  Our tent was from Blacks. However, if you are interested in a small tent (or a larger one!) you can get both tents from Blacks and Millets.

Sleeping bags were a much debated item between Sam and I since I hate being cold. I basically wanted a sleeping bag that you could use on Everest because it would keep you warm even in negative temperatures. Sam thought that was overkill and urged me to have something that had a bit of a more generic 2-3 season use. We ended up agreeing on some absolute beaut Berghaus mummy bags. They retained their heat really well and were super lightweight so it wasn’t an issue if we had to carry them for a little while. One of us usually had a dog in the bottom of our bag, so that added an extra bit of heat too. If you’re interested in any Eurohike sleeping bag, you can find so many options with both Blacks and Millets.

The one thing I would have changed about our kit is that I would have brought some sort of airbed, mat or camping bed. Sam and I slept old-school camping style (sleeping bags on the ground) which was fine when we were camping on a beautiful sandy beach near Gairloch, but it was much, much harder when we were sleeping on a rocky mountainside near Loch Leven.

3. Book your campsite in advance. 

If you are camping in the Highlands in the summertime and want to camp at a designated camping site, book your slot in advance. Nearly every place we camped was completely full, so you definitely don’t want to drive for 5 hours, turn up somewhere you had your heart set on just to be turned away. Of course, in Scotland, you are allowed to wild camp. That means that you are allowed to camp on any unenclosed land (bar military land, historic house trusts, etc). But be polite and use common sense. Don’t leave fire scars, don’t cut down any trees and don’t leave any trash behind. Pretty basic courtesies, really.

4. Prepare yourself for the midges

Midges are undoubtedly the absolute worst part of camping in Scotland. Those hateful little annoyances are everywhere. It was the one thing that everyone warned us about before we embarked on our adventure. I won’t buy a bug spray with deet in it. So we came prepped with a big bottle of Avon Skin So Soft. Which is not a bug spray, but a dry oil spray, however, due to having lemongrass essential oil in it, it keeps the midges at bay.  It’s what the Royal Marines use as midge spray and if it is good enough for the Royal Marines, it was good enough for us.

And since there were no nasty chemicals in it, I didn’t feel bad about spraying it on my hands and then rubbing it all over Harold so that he didn’t get bothered either. It worked an absolute treat for us the entire time we were in Scotland except for the very last day when we stumbled into some sort of midge nest and Sam got eaten alive. I’m talking hundreds of bites whilst I got 4 bites. Which lends full proof to the fact that some people are just more delicious to midges than others.

5. Do a big food shop 

We fell into the trap a few times of leaving our ice chest/cool bag empty and thinking “the next Sainsburys/Tesco/Aldi/Asda/Lidl/Co-op we go by, we’ll stop and fill up for the next few days.” And there were definitely times were we didn’t go by a food shop for days and ended up having to stock up at expensive convenience stores and petrol service stations. Learn from my mistakes.
walking harold highland cows highland cows near applecross

view out of tent at sands view across loch tent on beach at gairloch tent near gairloch tent at gairloch

tent and stunning view sunset in the highlands sunset and tent scottish highlands scottish highlands scenery sam walking harold north coast 500 near benn nevis near applecross millets tent lochs in the scottish highlands loch loch on way to ullapool loch leven tent loch leven out of tent view loch leven camping leaving the bealach na ba hills in scotland harold and sam harold and sam 2 harold and i harold and i posing harold and i on beach with jellyfish harold and i on beach near applecross glacier pass first entering the highlands clouds coming over peaks black and white beach blach and white loch beautiful sunset mountains beach beach near applecross approaching applecross

Camping outfits details:

Purple Leggings
Black Leggings
Sandals 
Sweatshirt  *my Choose Love sweatshirt is from the Help Refugees project and 100% of the profits help to raise funds and awareness for people caught up in the refugee crisis.
Grey T-shirt 
Raincoat 
Sunglasses  

***Our tent and sleeping bag were gifted from Blacks and Millets, but all opinions are forever my own.***

Have you gone camping in Scotland? What areas would you recommend or things that you would have done differently?

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