Our first overnight! One of us spent many childhood holiday weekends camping just outside Pitlochry at a site called Faskally. Well, we say camping, it was actually a long weekend in a static caravan roughly the size of our current Edinburgh flat and couldn’t really be described as ‘roughing it’ in anyway. Yet despite the relative luxury, her mother was still not convinced that camping or caravanning of any sort constituted a ‘holiday’ and so the little one was sent off on these weekends with her best friend’s family, perhaps loving them even more as a result.
Armed with the happy memories of these always-gloriously-sunny weekends, we decided to play it safe for our first night away and head back to Faskally, consoling ourselves with the thought that if it was a complete disaster and rain ended up pouring in through every nook and cranny of the camper van, we could always take shelter in the heated shower blocks…
All in all a successful first night away, topped off by some lovely bacon and egg rolls in the morning. Small pleasures.
On arriving at the site we were given the option of a ‘hard pitch’ for an additional £2. Being complete novices to this whole campervanning malarkey we decided we should splash out. Good call. The risk of a grass pitch (we now realise) is that you could well end up on a slope and as we haven’t yet invested in the yellow wedge things that everyone seems to have this could have led to a pretty uncomfortable night. Having a hard pitch did mean we ended up looking slightly out of place in the middle of a long row of giant American-style RV’s (with satellite dishes, bizarre…) but it also meant we had a huge amount of space around us. Result.
A weekend at Faskally wouldn’t be complete without the traditional walk along the banks of the River Garry to Killiecrankie Visitor Centre, passing by the tree where lovers past have left their mark, the Balfour stone and the Soldier’s Leap viewpoint. After some considerable time debating whether or not young Donald MacBean could ever actually have escpaed from the Highlanders by making that jump, we made the last ascent to the road side visitor centre only to discover that it had closed 5 minutes previously. Gutted.com/noicecream.
We did have champagne though, so buoyed up by that thought we headed back to camp to toast Doris and our inaugural road trip in the last of the evening sun. But this is Scotland of course, so it didn’t take long for the heavens to open and the thunder and lightening to begin… We figured it was actually quite good to see how well Doris (and we) coped in pouring rain so we settled in for the night with some spaghetti and meatballs, a nice bottle of red and a DVD.
And slept very well in the end! No leaks, comfortable bed, plenty of space… All in all a successful first night away, topped off by some lovely bacon and egg rolls in the morning. Small pleasures.
