Yesterday we drove up to Scotland and stayed in the camper van at a campsite in Dalbeattie. The weather was beautiful and sunny on the way up and was still lovely the next morning, albeit cold. The van windows were all iced up but the insulation we had used did the trick as it wasn’t too cold inside considering we have no heaters.
We drove out to Kirroughtree Forest this morning, which is one of the 7 Stanes – a group of seven mountain biking trail centres in the south of Scotland. They are all on Forestry Commission land and so also have waymarked forest walks so whilst Duncan went out for a ride, Ruby and I went for a run. At the car park there was no snow to be seen however once we started going up hill, the tracks were caked with ice and I was regretting having left my Orocs in the van. I was only wearing trail shoes so was slipping around all over the place, as was Ruby, so it was even more slow going than usual. We really enjoyed ourselves though, well at least until near the end when Ruby completely ran out of steam and just decided she’d rather sniff everything instead.
I arrived back at the van before Duncan so fried up some bacon butties for our lunch. I really do love our van!
After our respective exercise sessions, we drove into Castle Douglas and had a wander round before driving out to find tonight’s campsite. Earlier in the week I had looked up a few campsites as it can be quite difficult to find one which is open at this time of year so I wanted to make sure we had contingency plans in case we didn’t find anything just driving along. We headed out to a site which was on the road up towards Ayr from Castle Douglas. We arrived and drove up a track towards a partially built house with a shabby looking static caravan outside. Duncan said to me ‘where’s the campsite’ to which I replied ‘I think this is it!’. A chap walked over and said we should park up on the track as it was more level than the grassy area. We really didn’t want to stay here but the bloke was so nice it was difficult to say thanks but no thanks. We asked if there were showers as we had both been out running/biking and needed one and he said no so we thought this would be a good excuse to go elsewhere but he then said we could use the shower in his house. He took Duncan on a ‘tour’ of the site, which was basically over to the static caravan which he had previously told us was not fit for purpose anymore and used to store chicken feed, and this was where the toilet was. It was just a scruffy static caravan toilet. I wouldn’t mind but this site is a Camping and Caravanning certified site, last certified in 2014. Seriously? Wild camping is far preferable and is free, not a tenner which was the price here. Duncan got back in the van and we sat wondering what to do because we didn’t want to hurt this bloke’s feelings as he was really nice and seemed proud of his little site. In the end, I’m sorry to say that we were complete pathetic wimps and just drove off as if we were nipping to the shops and didn’t come back.
By this time it was dark and we had no idea where we were going to stay for the night. I had no internet signal on my phone so ended up ringing my mum and asking her to google campsites for me. After about an hour or so of driving, we eventually came to a campsite near to Newton Stewart. As we drove up to it, we couldn’t see the site, just a big farm yard full of horses, ponies, chickens and massive turkeys. After wandering around in the pitch dark muddy farm yard for a while we realised that this was in fact the campsite. It was just so difficult to tell as it was so dark and there were no other campers/motorhomes/caravans/tents there.
I wandered into the toilet/shower block for a nosey and it was lit only with candles and so was pretty difficult to see anything. It was very hippy stylee and this made showering a little difficult!
In the light of day the next morning though, it turns out the campsite was really nice. It was pretty far from any roads so was really peaceful and had lovely views although these photos don’t do it any justice at all.
Total distance – 5 miles
https://www.strava.com/activities/252638846
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