We picked up the motorhome in Glasgow and pointed it north.
He is a Roller Team Zefiro, his name is Hamish, and we hired him through Camplify from Jodie, who talked us through everything and sent us off with local advice we did not ask for but warmly welcomed. This is a first for most of us. Gill toured New Zealand this way about eight years ago, so she is the only one who knows what she is doing. Two weeks, five key bases: Stirling, Inverness, Portree on Skye, Fort William, Loch Lomond, then back to Glasgow. Plenty of side adventures and day trips planned in and around each one.
And we intend to do it properly. Cooking most meals, board games and music in the evenings, which up here do not really get dark until around eleven, and a plan for hiding from Scottish weather that mostly involves accepting it.
First base is Witches Craig at Blairlogie, on the edge of Stirling, and it is a good start. The park sits right at the foot of the Ochil Hills with the National Wallace Monument on Abbey Craig looking down over it and Stirling Castle on the horizon three miles away. It has been run by the Dewar family for about forty years and it was named AA Scottish Campsite of the Year for 2025, which we could see within about ten minutes of arriving. Immaculate facilities, hardstanding pitches, flowers everywhere, a playground the girls went straight to, and a genuinely nice buzz with kids running about and people out in chairs. There was a coffee and breakfast van on site, A Cup Above, which is the sort of thing you appreciate very much at 7am. It is not there every day, but we were glad for it. Eight out of ten, and we would happily come back.
This morning was the first proper motorhome breakfast. Bacon and Lorne sausage on the three burner hob, soft rolls, eggs, coffee made in the van, eaten outside with the Ochils turning gold behind us. Lorne sausage is the square one, for anyone who has not met it, and it fits a roll far better than a round sausage ever will. There is a particular satisfaction in cooking a fry up in a vehicle you also sleep in, then sitting down to eat it with a hill in front of you.
When we eat inside, the girls tend to claim the front seats, which swivel around to face the table. The wine pantry and fridge are stocked. Everything else we will work out as we go.
Stirling proper today, with the Wallace Monument and Bannockburn, then Doune Castle.
