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Our own private island



In our original plan for the week, we were supposed to be spending Monday night on the Isle of Skye at Camasunary bay then climbing BlĂ  Bheinn on Tuesday morning. But when we checked the weather on the Sunday evening we saw it was going to be miserable on Monday and even worse Tuesday so we had to re plan! 

After searching online for a spot somewhere mid-way between Ullapool and Ballachulish, I came accross Glen Affric. Then it was a case of zooming in on the map until I found somewhere that looked suitable for a tent! We decided to head to Loch Bienn a'Mheadhain car park and try and find what I thought looked like a little island, connected to the Loch edge by a thin spit. 





There is free parking in the car park and space for maybe 20 cars. Close to the car park there are picnic benches and leading away are little forest tracks. We took a track heading right towards where I thought the island was and about 750m later we saw it! 

Crossing the spit onto the island, we started to scope out some camp spots. The left hand side of the island was sheltered from the wind so we initially headed that way, but after stopping for 2 mins to check a spot and getting swarmed by midges, we decided the exposed side might be better! On the right hand side of the island we found a little clearing in the trees with soft woodland ground - perfect for pitching the tent. I started setting up our Vango while Stephen headed back to the van to grab some more stuff. 






By the time he was back I had pitched the tent and cracked out our Cadac to start making some lunch. A forestry ranger walked past, said hello and did the usual wild camp checks (confirming we weren't going to have any ground fires and that we would be taking a shovel to the toilet with us!).  We ate lunch, then took the boys for a swim in the Loch so they could play with their new Lunker






My favourite part about this site was the combination of trees and open floor, it meant that I was able to hang our hammock next to our camp and have a proper chill out swaying in the wind. From about 4pm the temperature dropped as the sun was blocked by the mountains surrounding the valley so we set up our raised fire and set up some logs we had brought from home. 






Dinner was Thai Green Curry with chicken (which tasted amazing), followed by a pudding of toasted marshmallows. The boys had already taken themselves off to bed about 8pm and we followed about 9:30pm to get a good sleep before our 5:30am alarm. 










In the morning we managed to catch the sun rising through the trees as we had our coffee and cooked some breakfast. Then we packed up all of our stuff, leaving no trace of course, and headed back to the van to go bag some munros!