Glen Doll wild camp

Like with most of our wild camps, we chose this spot due to its location re munros. We knew we wanted to climb Tolmount, Tom Buidhe, Mayar and Dreish, so this was the perfect place to make a base! 

After work on the Friday we set off to Glen Doll car park. If the weather was good then the last half an hour winding through the highland valley would have been beautiful. Unfortunately for us it was raining and there was thick fog. There were also a LOT of pheasants with death wishes. I think I spent more of the last 1km of the road breaking so as not to run anyone over than I did actually driving! 

Image @WalkHighlands

After successfully getting through the pheasants without killing anything (that I know of) we arrived in the car park. Its quite large and has space for 50-ish cars. There's a lovely picnic area next to the river and it allows overnight camping. There are toilets at the ranger centre and a lots of useful information on the visitor board. The car park has a charge of 2gbp (bring coins!) for the duration of your stay. There is a sign up to ask you to let the rangers know if you plan to be away from your car for more than 48hrs so they don't alert the emergency services with a false alarm. 

There are a few areas the rangers suggest camping, for example in Glendoll forest itself, but we headed through the picnic area and followed the river for ~1km until we found a perfect little clearing to pitch the tent. 

Fighting through a cloud of midges we pitched the tent! Stephen got a fire going while I set up our sleep area and by the time I was finished the midges had dispersed. We sat outside for a little bit just watching the river before we headed to bed. 

In the morning the midges were still out in full force! I decided that we would sacrifice Stephen and so booted him out of the tent to start cooking brekkie while I packed up our sleep area and started prepping our bags for the day's hike. We ate our food inside the safety of the Vango then put on our midgey nets, packed up the tent and headed off for our first 2 munros of the weekend; Tolmount and Tom Buidhe. 

When we returned back from the munros we got changed into some dry clothes then headed back to our spot from the first night, happy to see that it was still free! Once again, Stephen got a fire going to shoo away the midges while I pitched the tent and set up the sleep area. 

We had a good few hours left in the afternoon so I cracked out the hammock to have a little snooze with Spence while Stephen read his book. After that we sat by the fire to cook dinner (Steak and rice - YUM!) and popped Stephen's boots under the fire stand to dry them out. It actually worked surprisingly well - after 2 hours they were nearly dry!

Just as it started to get dark the rain came so we packed away the chairs and headed into the tent to get ready for bed. Sleeping next to the river was odd - on the one hand I felt like we had possibly the best live sleep/meditation track imaginable, but we both woke up in the morning desperate for a pee!! 

In the morning we did our usual - Stephen started cooking while I packed everything away and then we headed back to the car before setting off to climb Mayar and Driesh. I was SO happy to see that we could actually see! For the first time in the trip there was no low-cloud and there was actually sunshine. It was beautiful and the perfect conditions to climb our next 2 munros in.