Travel Diaries: Camping in Scotland

This year, I went camping for the first time!

Back in June, my boyfriend and I took our first trip together and decided to go camping for five days in Scotland. A brave move I feel as it wasn't only our first trip away together but it was also my first time ever camping😄 Luckily things all worked out well and I had a brilliant times and we didn't have any issues (despite the fact there was one day I got tired and hungry and became a bit of a pain to deal with😅).

We camped in the Glen Nevis Campsite which I loved. Once our tent was set up, we could just leave it there for us ready to come back to at night after days out exploring or visiting different places. The weather was in our favour when we arrived and left which meant setting up and taking down the tent was a fairly easy job overall. On our first day, after arriving and setting up our tent, we set off on our first adventure of the trip which was to go and see the Glenfinnan viaduct - where scenes from the Hogwarts express for the Harry Potter movies was filmed. It had been somewhere I had always wanted to see as I love seeing places where movies were filmed in person. I feel like I was so excited and in awe that I didn't even manage to capture any good photos of it. It was so cool to see in person though. After seeing the viaduct, we went for dinner in Fort William to a pizza place called 'The Pizzeria' where we had, you guessed it, tasty pizza!

The next day, we took a trip to the silver sands of Morar Bay. We were lucky that it turned out to be a pretty nice day and I went paddle boarding for the first time. I had lots of fun despite not being very good at it and unable to stand up due to my lack of balance and coordination😄 We drove into Mallaig for lunch and ordered fish and chips which was another tasty meal we had. In the evening, we decided to go for a hike to see the Steall waterfall. We took a slightly more challenging route to get there but we made it and it was worth it for the views we got at the top. Everywhere was so pretty and it felt like we got the best view of the waterfall from where we ended up. To get back, we walked the easier route but to get to the easier route, we had to cross over the rope bridge. When I was told about the rope bridge at first, I was picturing the type of bridge in Shrek to get to Fiona's castle, I wasn't expecting a single rope to walk along with two ropes at the side to hold onto! I was unsure whether I was going to make it, but with the help of my personal cheerleader, I made it across! By this point in the day I was getting tired from all the things we'd done that day as well as being hungry so I was getting cranky and disagreeable😄 We went to a Chinese takeaway for dinner which really lifted my spirits back up again.😄 It was another great day though!

On day three, we decided to take a trip to Skye to see the fairy pools. Along the way, we stopped off at a food van and got coffee and crepes. It was a foggier, rainy day but that didn't dampen the excitement for the day. We got to Skye, parked up the car, pulled on our waterproofs and then set off for the pools. Despite the fog and rain, we had a great time walking along the path to find the fairy pools. However, in our excitement, we ended up walking straight past them! We only thought to turn back when we realised that all the other tourists that we had seen on our walk were nowhere to be found by this point. As we walked back, we ended up seeing the fair pools (we think, still not 100% sure we were at the right bit but it looked magical regardless😄). I'd love to go back on a clearer day to really take in and see the views, but there was still something enchanting about it being surrounded in fog, I felt it really added to the ambience. 

On our last day, we went to the Nevis Range Gondola where we rode in one to the top of the Aonach Mòr Mountain. The views along the way were stunning and we had a fairly nice day weather-wise for it too. When we got to the top, we took in the views and saw someone on a paraglider take off from the top. It was really cool. Maybe one day I'll go back and actually climb to the top! The gondola was really cool though, I would recommend visiting and going up in one. Afterwards, we decided to go to some souvenir shops in the area and around Fort William too. We got matching jumpers which we've both loved wearing throughout the year ever since. Since this was our last night, we decided to go out for a fancier dinner and went to 'The Grog and Gruel' for some really tasty steak pies.

We even made the most of our last day as we journeyed back home. We passed through Fort Augustus and stopped for some fish and chips and ice cream. We stopped by a place called Nessieland which felt like such a random little place filled with Nessie stories and souvenirs, Then we passed through Inverness and spent some time in and around there too. It was just a nice way to round off our first camping trip.

I had such a great time for my first time camping and this really is just a quick summarry of everything we managed to fir into the days we were here. Camping is something that I would love to do again so if you have any camping place recommendations, I'd love to hear about them!

Bye for now, xo