Scotland Diary: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs | Day One
Packing away the tent has become somewhat of an easier task each time we do it and we’ve managed to get the timings down quite rapidly. It’s packing the car that’s the hard part. We’ve got so much crap milling about and lots of things we really should’ve left behind, but somehow we manage to squeeze it all into every nook and cranny within the car.
You see, my idea of packing is to assess the situation carefully before methodically slotting things into place, leaving no gaps. Rachel’s idea of packing, however, is to chuck everything in and hope for the best. Then she’ll get annoyed, start to flap and declare that she hates her life. It’s quite an interesting moment to watch, to be honest, but we’ve gotten quite good at knowing each other’s strengths.
Once we’d said goodbye to Kelburn Castle it was time to head upwards to Loch Lomond. Not particularly wanting to pass through the busy roads of Glasgow, we opted for a detour. And that detour was Go Outdoors. As in, the camping shop. You know the one.
Honestly, one of our favourite things to do is to sit inside Go Outdoors, or any other camping shop for that matter, and pretend we’re better at this wild way of living than we actually are.
Let me quickly take you back to where all this began.
When Rachel and I lived together in Wellington, New Zealand, we’d often spend our weekends walking, hiking, discovering new coffee shops and visiting Dwights Outdoors camping shop. We always felt comfortable there, normal even. We’d spend hours looking at the tents, lounging about inside them and chilling out on the newest camping chairs for that week. We’d scan the cooking equipment, showing each other whatever we had found and genuinely just had a nice time in there. Never bought anything mind you, besides a drinking bottle. This then evolved into a fortnightly shopping trip to Kathmandu and if you notice the burnt orange coat that I often wear in the later pictures, that’s from there, bought 5 years ago.
Ok, back to the present day in Go Outdoors.
Rather than just lounge about on the chairs and in the tents like we usually do, we actually decided to do a little bit of shopping and picked up some more citronella candles ready for battle with the inevitable onslaught of midges. We’d been warned about the midges and after our first encounter with them down in Glentrool, we wanted to be ready for them!
Killing an hour or so in Go Outdoors meant we were more than on time for our next destination, Cobleland Campsite, The Trossachs.
Cobleland Campsite and the back of Geraldine
When we arrived, we were greeted by a lovely lady with an English accent. She introduced herself and gave us clear instructions on where to pitch, she also filled us in on what we could do in the area and where the nearest shops were etc.
At first, she had told us to take advantage of the riverbank and to set the trend of how to pitch over there. But after a brief discussion between Rachel and myself, we decided to actually pitch up further down away from the riverbank. Riverbanks mean midges. Riverbanks also mean screaming children. We weren’t greenies anymore, we were actually becoming better at picking the best pitches. Of course, nobody can predict who will pitch up next to you but for the most part, we were getting better at spotting the neighbours that we didn’t want.
Once we’d found our spot in the shade, we pitched up in less than 15 minutes. Geraldine was erect, her broken and splintery pole severely and worryingly jutting out to one side and our little cooking station set up just off to the other side.
The midday heat was absolutely ridiculous! I felt as though the sun was punishing me, beating down on me and me alone. I should've been used to it I suppose, I’d not long been back from Thailand, but after enduring a miserable British winter, it suffices to say, I was definitely not acclimatised and my hay fever was out of control. I needed a goddamn shower.
Call it experience from hostel living or a keen intuition, but I’ve always known when the best time to shower is in order to beat the crowds. Campsites always have more toilets than showers and in some cases, there are literally only two showers for the whole site. You can imagine everyone and their mother trying to avoid the sticky heat and get clean. But I had this knack figured out. As soon as check-in comes around, head straight for the shower. The families that are already on-site will be out enjoying their day and the other people that arrive at a similar time will be too busy setting up to even think about it. Usually, check-in happens straight after the toilet and shower blocks have been cleaned too, so it’s definitely the best time to experience an unspoiled, refreshing, peaceful moment of bliss.
There’s just something so revitalising about having a shower in the middle of the day that sets you up for the rest of the afternoon into the evening. So not long afterwards, I settled into some different clothes and we went for our first walk in The Trossachs.
On the way to Aberfoyle and yes, that is my hat!
The Lodge Forest Visitor Centre in Aberfoyle had everything we needed in order to get our bearings and figure out which walk we’d like to do and what to do after that. We decided to go with Doon Hill as it looked like quite a gentle loop with some fairy trees. Magical.
It was at this point that it all went downhill. Needless to say, we never made it to Doon Hill, so I can’t provide you with any pictures of it. Nor did we make it to Fairy Knowe.
In our defence, there’s one particular landing spot during the walk where there are no signs whatsoever but three separate paths. The lady at the Visitor Centre assured us that everything would be well-signposted and obvious, but to us, looking at these three separate paths, nothing was obvious. We could either go left, right or straight up through the middle.
Directly in front of us was a young couple dragging their screaming toddler, not surprised to be honest, I’d be crying too if I was made to walk up steep hills in the red hot sun with my little toddler legs. They’d chosen to go straight up through the middle. Not wanting to be stuck behind them for the whole duration, we now only had the options of left and right. Even worse, as Rachel got the map out to find any slight indication of where we should go, she was suddenly bitten quite savagely on the hand by a huge horsefly.
That was it as far as she was concerned. The walk was over.
Feeling defeated once again, we chose to turn left which took us through the woods, past the mountain bikers, into a field, and then back onto the path that led us back into Aberfoyle. Deciding to head into Co-Op for some well-needed refreshments, we ducked past the Visitor Centre (just in case the same ‘informative’ lady saw our failure) and headed straight for the cold, sweet blast of aircon that awaited us.
Armed with fizzy drinks and sandwiches, we made our way to a park bench to sit and people-watch before the long trek back to the campsite. Rachel’s mood had depleted quite severely by this point and knowing we still had a long way to go, I used every distraction tactic possible. The one that always works is telling her scary stories, quite ironic really, seeing as she hates anything remotely scary, real crime stories or fictional horror films. With the number of documentaries I watch, I had a backlog of distractions for her and before we knew it, we were back with Geraldine.
Later that evening, we’d settled back into camp life where we discovered that a new family had rocked up behind us. Rachel’s hand had swollen up so badly from the bite that she looked like she was going through some kind of limb transplant. So with some dinner and an antihistamine each later, we decided to call it a night. The dishes could wait, a decent sleep was in order.
Of course, that decent sleep never came.
Not with the name ‘Arya’ being yelled out every two minutes by the new family. Arya, by the way, was no more than two or three years old but she got shouted at and told off more times in one night than I’d ever been in my whole life.
Well, I hope Arya slept well that night because as you can probably guess, I absolutely did not.
Read the next entry ‘Scotland Diary: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs| Day Two’
Read the previous entry ‘Scotland Diary: Galloway and Fairlie’
