My Happy Travels

A House, A Castle, A Loch

From Glasgow we started the Highland part of the trip. We had a bit of an easy day driving planned.

As day broke, we had nothing booked for a camp site but knowing we had a few nights ahead of us where we were free camping tonight was to be a recharge, rewater and washing day so we needed to find a park to stay for the night that had these services. The first place at the bottom of Loch Lomond was booked out so I had to look a little further away to find Cashel ….. I would call them later in the morning to secure sites for the night.

Instead of a straight shot to Loch Lomond, we had to explore a little and Overtoun House came up as an interesting place to visit. The house which very much resembled a castle, was donated to the community in 1936 and has since been a wellness facility and tea house. The tea house was not open and posted a sign about opening again when they were able to find sufficient staff to run it. We had a walk around the grounds anyway which also seemed to be a popular place to bring your dog for a walk.

Dumbarton Castle was next on the list. This was again as castle on a rock in a strategic position on the River Clyde. Mary Queen of Scots again had a connection here as somewhere she stayed until she was shipped off to France from here. This site felt less ‘castle’ and more ‘military’ with cannons pointed in every direction from the heights of the rock. There was 600 odd steps to climb so we got to work off some those beers and whisky we had consumed the day before!

A quick stop at Morrisons supermarket to restock the campers and we were off to find our camp for the night.

Well… let me tell you, camping right on the water front of Loch Lomond was pretty damn special. Seriously, does the view get any better than this?

Tip #10 – all the best laid plans sometimes don’t work out and you can stumbled onto a spot even better than the one you thought!

We had a picnic table between the vans which soon became a spot for lunch followed by some drinks to soak it all in whilst battling the washing machine delays… eventually we got chores done and were able to relax with a game of cards. As the evening progressed, we cooked up some steaks n mash for dinner and settled in to watch a spectacular sunset.