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I went away camping on an island in Loch Lomond from Sunday to Tuesday. Thought I'd make a thread for some pics.
The last time I was camping I was probably about 10, my brother and his friends put up a couple of tents in the back garden of our house and I had to come back into the house after a couple of hours because I was too cold. Needless to say, my camping experience is limited. The only preparation I did was to (partially) put up the tent in the back garden a couple of days before we went.
The weather was great on the day we left (pic from my house):
I planned to just eat biscuits and mints, I didn't want to rely on being able to cook stuff, I'm terrible with barbecues and gas stoves. I bought two packs of digestive biscuits, two packs of rich tea biscuits, two packs of ritz crackers, a pack of bourbon biscuits and a couple of packs of mints to keep me going.
We drove up to Balloch in convoy with another car and arrived in the early afternoon on Sunday. We unpacked the cars and put everything on the boat we'd go across to the island on. A friend of ours dad has a boat, which he very kindly allowed us to make use of for the trip (in return for a nice bottle of whisky). The journey across was short, 15 minutes maybe, which was fine with me because I don't like boats very much. I've forgotten the name of the island we went to, but it was beautiful. There were 10 of us in total over the 2 nights, but some left and came over the two days. There were 3 tents in total and some people slept in the boat at night.
The boat:
After we arrived and unloaded all our equipment and food from the boat, we immediately pitched our tent. The only flat area we could find was on the beach, but there were quite a few large stones underneath the sand so we couldn't get all our tent pegs in. Our tent looks a bit dodgy (partly because of the tent peg problem, partly because it's quite old and mostly because of lack of experience):
The other two tents looked a lot more professional and modern:
Next thing to do was to crack open a drink, have a wee sit down, enjoy the view, have a shot in the dinghy then get to work on starting the fire.
The fire we had on the first day was pretty good, mainly thanks to the endless work of one of the party (not myself). The picture above isn't very impressive, but it was much bigger and hotter later on that night.
Where our tents were was only a few metres from quite a dense forest, great for wood and for relieving yourself out of sight:
I live in a fairly small town and study in Glasgow, so I don't spend a lot of time really out in the country. It's easy to take Scotland for granted when you don't get out in it much. The scenery around our camp site was fantastic:
I also tried to capture the sunrise on Tuesday morning, but we were on the wrong side of the island. It was only pitch black for a few hours, the place was getting light extremely early. This picture was taken at 3:08am:
These were taken a bit later, around 4 am:
The swan you can see in the above pics (and a few ducks you can't see) were regulars at our camp site. The swan was awfully brave, coming up to our fire and barbecues and stealing bread
The weather was great for most of the trip. On Sunday there were occasional showers, but we were kept dry by the trees and the fire. On Monday and Tuesday the weather was fantastic, as my sunburn will attest. The forecast was for torrential rain, so we were lucky we got it so good.
We went for walks round the island, getting a bit adventurous. We saw various wildlife, most impressive were the wallabies though. I didn't know there were wallabies in Scotland but we saw probably 15 or 20 of them. We got quite close too, about 10 metres or so. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me at the time, so I don't have any pics of them
We came back across to the mainland about 4 in the afternoon yesterday and it was sad to leave. An enjoyable time was had by all and, as with the Subcrawl, there were no injuries which is good.
Here are a couple of random pics taken from the Erskine Bridge:
P.S. The quality of some of the pics is a bit dodgy, I know, but I took my cheap digital camera with me. I didn't want to take anything too expensive, considering students are obviously going to try and smoke, drink or eat anything they can get their hands on
I think most of the shots turned out well though, considering the dodgy camera, the dodgy photographer and the fact I was a little inebriated.
Hope you guys enjoy the pics!
The last time I was camping I was probably about 10, my brother and his friends put up a couple of tents in the back garden of our house and I had to come back into the house after a couple of hours because I was too cold. Needless to say, my camping experience is limited. The only preparation I did was to (partially) put up the tent in the back garden a couple of days before we went.
The weather was great on the day we left (pic from my house):
I planned to just eat biscuits and mints, I didn't want to rely on being able to cook stuff, I'm terrible with barbecues and gas stoves. I bought two packs of digestive biscuits, two packs of rich tea biscuits, two packs of ritz crackers, a pack of bourbon biscuits and a couple of packs of mints to keep me going.
We drove up to Balloch in convoy with another car and arrived in the early afternoon on Sunday. We unpacked the cars and put everything on the boat we'd go across to the island on. A friend of ours dad has a boat, which he very kindly allowed us to make use of for the trip (in return for a nice bottle of whisky). The journey across was short, 15 minutes maybe, which was fine with me because I don't like boats very much. I've forgotten the name of the island we went to, but it was beautiful. There were 10 of us in total over the 2 nights, but some left and came over the two days. There were 3 tents in total and some people slept in the boat at night.
The boat:
After we arrived and unloaded all our equipment and food from the boat, we immediately pitched our tent. The only flat area we could find was on the beach, but there were quite a few large stones underneath the sand so we couldn't get all our tent pegs in. Our tent looks a bit dodgy (partly because of the tent peg problem, partly because it's quite old and mostly because of lack of experience):
The other two tents looked a lot more professional and modern:
Next thing to do was to crack open a drink, have a wee sit down, enjoy the view, have a shot in the dinghy then get to work on starting the fire.
The fire we had on the first day was pretty good, mainly thanks to the endless work of one of the party (not myself). The picture above isn't very impressive, but it was much bigger and hotter later on that night.
Where our tents were was only a few metres from quite a dense forest, great for wood and for relieving yourself out of sight:
I live in a fairly small town and study in Glasgow, so I don't spend a lot of time really out in the country. It's easy to take Scotland for granted when you don't get out in it much. The scenery around our camp site was fantastic:
I also tried to capture the sunrise on Tuesday morning, but we were on the wrong side of the island. It was only pitch black for a few hours, the place was getting light extremely early. This picture was taken at 3:08am:
These were taken a bit later, around 4 am:
The swan you can see in the above pics (and a few ducks you can't see) were regulars at our camp site. The swan was awfully brave, coming up to our fire and barbecues and stealing bread
The weather was great for most of the trip. On Sunday there were occasional showers, but we were kept dry by the trees and the fire. On Monday and Tuesday the weather was fantastic, as my sunburn will attest. The forecast was for torrential rain, so we were lucky we got it so good.
We went for walks round the island, getting a bit adventurous. We saw various wildlife, most impressive were the wallabies though. I didn't know there were wallabies in Scotland but we saw probably 15 or 20 of them. We got quite close too, about 10 metres or so. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me at the time, so I don't have any pics of them
We came back across to the mainland about 4 in the afternoon yesterday and it was sad to leave. An enjoyable time was had by all and, as with the Subcrawl, there were no injuries which is good.
Here are a couple of random pics taken from the Erskine Bridge:
P.S. The quality of some of the pics is a bit dodgy, I know, but I took my cheap digital camera with me. I didn't want to take anything too expensive, considering students are obviously going to try and smoke, drink or eat anything they can get their hands on
I think most of the shots turned out well though, considering the dodgy camera, the dodgy photographer and the fact I was a little inebriated.
Hope you guys enjoy the pics!
Seriously though, lovely weather, lovely scenery - I ought to get up there sometime. There's nothing quite like sitting around a fire with a bunch of friends and watching the flames, I love doing that.
