Trust me, we do intend to venture more than an hour up the A9 over the coming months, but this weekend one of us had a prior engagement with Miss Jean Brodie at Pitlochry Festival Theatre so we decided to make a mini-break of it and camp just a few miles up the road at Blair Atholl.

Keen to get two full nights away, we raced home from work at 5 on the dot, threw our clothes in the van and chugged out of town. The sun was shining, the wine was chilling and we had that Friday feeling… Until half way across the Forth Road Bridge we realised we’d forgotten our towels. Now one night camping without a shower is manageable but two really isn’t fair to anyone. Fortunately the fellow theatre-goers were able to come to the rescue and bring us some the next day so all was not lost.

We had thought it would be nice to go for a meal after we arrived on the Friday night, lovely start to the weekend and all that, so we phoned a couple of places nearby to try and book only to be informed that the last table was at 8.00pm. Em, 8.00pm is the latest you will serve? Who eats before 8.00pm? Surely 8.00pm is the standard time to think about starting to eat dinner…? Apparently not.

So it was fish and chips on the way instead. Oh and for future reference, there are two fish and chip shops in Pitlochry, a good one and a bad one. The good one is The Plaice to Be. The bad one is the Ardchoille Fish & Chip Cafe. Seriously, trust us.

Blair Castle Camp Site is part of the castle estate and set in absolutely amazing scenery. To be honest it’s the kind of big, commercial site that we thought we would try and avoid in favour of the less well known gems featured in Cool Camping but on this occasion the location sold it to us. We pitched up next to the forest at the far side of the site with masses of space around us, loving the chance to sit out in the fresh air. In fact it was a fantastic site which, despite its size, felt very peaceful and secluded.

One of the things we love about the VW scene is the friendliness of our fellow enthusiasts. On the Saturday morning we went for a walk around the castle grounds, saw some deer and horses, and returned to the van to find a very excited small boy cycling up and down on his bike next to our pitch. He skidded to a halt right in front of Doris and announced that his family had exactly the same camper van in yellow on the other side of the campsite. Intrigued, we took him up on his offer to come and see it (slightly worrying that we would get there and find some sort of toy van and a set of bemused parents) and lo and behold he was right. Not only was it a Westfalia conversion (a Helsinki to be precise), it also had the fairly un-common square spare tyre box on the front that Doris has. And fortunately his parents had been fully appraised of the twin camper van situation so they were more than happy to show us around and give us their camping tips! From that point on our cycling chum was our best bud and Mavis, as she was known, our most recent ‘spot’.

Now fully aware of expected eating times north of the central belt, we booked into local restaurant The Loft for an early dinner on the Saturday night. While the service was somewhat lacking, the meal itself was fantastic. We both had a very good grilled goat’s cheese and roast vegetable salad to start with and then an excellent value fillet steak and chips. To be fair there’s not a huge selection of places to eat in Blair Atholl but this local bistro is well worth knowing about.

The rest of the weekend included more forest walks, a lot of laughs at a deserted adventure playground, an energetic game of rounders (with some friends who were up for the week with his daughter), a rather one-sided game of pool and a nine hole putting extravaganza which was won (quite convincingly) by the Little One. We Sunday-lunched at House of Bruar and stocked up on tablet and funky wellies. Good times.

[Show as slideshow]