We don’t have to go far from home to see the fall foliage. These beautiful photos were taken close to home, most of them walking distance.

The best places in Glasgow for the autumn foliage includes the Kelvin Walkway, Botanic Gardens, Victoria Park, Mugdock Country Park, the Milngavie “Water Works”, Pollok Country Park and many of our other parks and walkways.

Here are a few from the weekend…

Perthshire remains our favourite part of the country to view the fall foliage and you can read about the best places in our kindle guide available from Amazon, however, we hope that you agree that there are also some great places right on our doorstep!

If you like the autumn colours as much as we do, check out our autumn portfolio on Photo4Me. There is currently a 10% discount available on all purchases using the code “pumpkin21” at the checkout, plus free postage as always.

Click here to view our latest video of our fantastic holiday (with lots of awesome canoeing) to Clachtoll in the Highlands and the Isle of Skye.

A fantastic trip!

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This goes back to the days when the highlight of your day was often picking up mail at the poste restante that had been posted out to you several weeks before.

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Now that we are getting well into October, the foliage is noticeably turning as hues of yellow, orange and red come through.

Our favourite part of the country to view the foliage is Perthshire, where there are many great spots for “leaf-peeping” as our American friends like to call it.

Last year I wrote a kindle guide to the places that are, in our opinion, best for viewing the autumn foliage. From now until around mid November is usually the best time.

Our kindle book can be purchased from Amazon for only £1.49, less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

Click here to view or buy.

Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer – this post contains Amazon Affiliate links.

Autumn is a great time to go for two reasons – you don’t have to plan in advance and buy a permit, and you get the changing colours of the foliage.

Loch Drunkie is on the Three Lochs Forest Drive near Aberfoyle, in the Trossachs. We went to one of our “usual” spots, on the beach at “G”. The water level was even lower than it had been when we last camped there in August. It was also busier than August, probably because the weather was drier this time (although there was still the odd light shower).

In total there were three tents at the “G” spot and we got chatting to the people in the one nearest to us, who also were set up with a tent and a tarp shelter on the beach.

We had taken the canoe, but didn’t use it in the end as I felt a bit sick the next day (nothing to do with the alcohol we had consumed of course!)

It was later in the afternoon by the time we had arrived and set up, so we just chilled out until dinner time. Then we opened a bottle of wine before dinner, followed by two more during and after (note to self – two bottles max between us next time!)

As the sun was getting lower, shining the late afternoon light on the trees surrounding the loch, making them almost glow, it was looking very pretty.

Paul got the fire started in the fire pit, which we also used to cook on. We had it set up just in front of our tarp in case we needed to take shelter (which we did, but only for a short time during a passing shower).

As the sun was starting to set, the sky and pink clouds looked very pretty reflected on the calm water. The fire was roaring by then and keeping us nice and warm.

Despite the change of seasons, we had a cosy night in the tent with our hot water bottles, duvet and sleeping bags.

On Sunday, we were both a bit hungover, but I was a lot worse than Paul, so unfortunately we didn’t get out for a paddle – the canoe stayed in the car. Paul had a cough, which had gotten worse, though it could have been the smoke from the fire. However, since he’d had it for a few days now, when we got home, he booked a PCR test, just in case and got a drive through appointment almost straight away.

When we arrived at the drive through test centre, I ended up asking for a test also, just to be on the safe side due to the people orientated nature of my job and because I also didn’t want to risk passing anything on to my mum.

Fortunately the results came back by email very early on Monday morning and we were both negative, so that was a relief.

The forest drive at Loch Drunkie is open until the end of October, so who knows, we might get another wee night away before it closes. We shall see what the weather does. We’d also like to do an autumn overnighter on Inchcailloch, so fingers crossed for some dry weather and watch this space…

Just published on both kindle (£1.99) and paperback (£6.95) our new book features another 10 great ideas for days out within a 90 minute drive of our home town of Glasgow.

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In Scotland we always have a public holiday at the end of September, and this year we decided that, since a local lockdown scuppered our Spring trip to Langdale, that we would try again and see if we were “second time lucky”. Fortunately, we were.

Great Langdale campsite, run by the National Trust, is in one of the more remote parts of the Lake District. It lies in a dramatic location, tucked in the valley, surrounded by the rugged Langdale mountains.

There are plenty of walks that can be done from the campsite, including the long hike up Scafell Pike, the second highest mountain in both the Lake District and England, and the equivalent of a Scottish “munro”. We did this hike from Greater Langdale many years ago when we were much younger; in fact our friend John reminded us that was the weekend that we “started our amazing life together “.

On this occasion, partly given that we don’t quite have the same stamina now that we had then (the return walk is just short of 20 kilometres) and partly because I am suffering from what Dr Google tells me is plantar fasciitis, we stuck with shorter walks.

On the Saturday it was mostly dry, with some drizzle, but a warm 18-20 degrees. We headed from the campsite to Blea Tarn, and onwards from there to the caves at Little Langdale.

We passed a few other walkers on the way, mostly in tee shirts despite the drizzle, as it was just too warm for rain jackets. At Blea Tarn the cloud was quite low and it was a bit misty, but still made for a pretty photo.

The walk was relatively easy going for the most part, although fairly steep as we left the campsite. From the tarn, it was mostly quite level or slightly downhill (we took the “long way” so as to spend as little time on the road as possible). We weren’t quite sure how to get to the caves, although we had a rough idea, but other walkers we met confirmed that we were on the right path as we headed towards Slater bridge, a very traditional and old bridge over the river Brathay.

From the bridge, it was only a short distance to the caves (which, although popularly referred to as caves, are actually a small network of inter-linked quarries). We entered through the “tunnel” in the photograph below…

As we came out the other end of the tunnel, we entered the huge cavern, known as the “Cathedral Cavern”, which was quite stunning!

There are quite a few caves to explore and some involve a bit of steep scrambling, so we didn’t explore them all. We found one that was accessible with some easy scrambling, which we entered and found ourselves looking down into the main “Cathedral” with nothing to stop us stepping over the edge!

Walking back from the caves, my foot started to hurt big time, so we ditched our planned trip to the local pub and chilled out at the campsite for the evening with a campfire, some wine and leftover curries that we had brought with us for a meal.

The next day, Sunday, the weather was turning for the worse. The drizzle was now rain, and the spells between showers became shorter and shorter. We decided on a short walk up to Stickle Tarn, following Stickle Ghyll (waterfall) all the way up via a series of man-made “steps” (until they stopped, and then it was a case of scrambling our way up the last part). The weather remained mainly dry as we hiked up alongside the waterfalls, but by the time we reached the tarn the cloud was very low, the rain was heavy and visibility was poor.

We didn’t spend long at the tarn, just long enough to take a couple of pretty wet “selfies” before tackling the scramble back down. Until we got to the path (or should I say “steps”) we had to just hope that we weren’t veering too far off course. We found a part of the waterfalls that seemed ok to cross at (it helped that we were wearing our welly boots) and we joined the path for the rest of the hike down.

It was quite hard going on the knees, so we were glad to reach the bottom. Once there, we headed into the Sticklebarn pub (also run by the National Trust) where we had a couple of drinks and an early dinner.

A short 15 minute walk back to the campsite and we got the fire going inside our tent (we have a stove inside, which is fabulous for the cooler months).

By 8pm the rain came on heavily and that was us until we had to pack up a wet tent in the morning (the downside of camping).

We would highly recommend the campsite at Langdale. The facilities were great, the location was stunning, it wasn’t crowded, fires & bbq’s are allowed as long as they are raised off the ground, as was our tent stove allowed (many campsites don’t allow either).

Here is a link to their website if anyone is interested.

We hope that you have enjoyed reading our blog. Please use the Like and Share buttons below if you did. Happy camping!

Now that we are almost into October, and the trees are just starting to show signs of turning, it’s a good time to check out our kindle guide to “leaf peeping” in Perthshire, Scotland’s “big tree country”

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Our guide to the best places in Perthshire to view the autumn foliage costs just £1.49 on Amazon Kindle.

Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer : the above link is an affiliate link with Amazon. This means we can receive a commission on a relevant purchase, but it does not affect the purchase price.

With Covid still causing all sorts of problems with travel this year, we have stuck to UK-based camping holidays for 2021. We have been lucky to have had one of the driest summers that I can remember, although on the second part of this trip we probably had as much rain as we have seen during the rest of the summer! (A slight exaggeration, but as we have come into September, the weather has, shall we say, started to become closer to what we are used to).

Both places that we visited, we have been to before on other trips, and you can read about them in more detail on their own dedicated webpages – Skye & Applecross and NC500.

As always with Scotland, there really is no right or wrong time to visit. For example, we visited Skye in early September on this trip and had mixed, but mostly quite wet, weather. On the other hand, when we went for a week in March back in 2018, we had beautiful weather and sunny skies for 90% of the time. At Clachtoll, during the first week of our holiday, we had mostly sunny days, which, coupled with the gorgeous white sand beaches and blue sea, made it look as if we had gone to the Caribbean! Just a week after we returned, we saw photos from both places that some people had posted on Facebook of the most wonderful northern lights, visible in colour by the eye, which is pretty special here in Scotland. Need we say how gutted we were to have missed that!

Our first stop for 6 nights was Clachtoll Beach Campsite, which we highly recommend! A lovely campsite, right next to the beach, with friendly owners and great facilities. We booked an electric hook-up for our tent, and were lucky to be given a pitch that was close to both the facilities and the path to the beach. If you follow our blogs then you know we love going out for paddles in our inflatable canoe, and this was the perfect place for doing so!

We took our canoe out in the bay, and past the “Split Rock”, exploring further bays and less accessible white sandy beaches. It’s possible to paddle all the way to Achmelvich on a calm day, but we went there separately as we were able to tie the (inflated) canoe onto the roofbars of our car to make for easy transportation.

There are also plenty of lochs in the area, and the one we chose for a paddle was Loch Assynt, where we got this great reflection of Adrvreck Castle in the calm waters…

Hiking is another activity where you are spoilt for choice in the area. The classic (for us) is Stac Pollaidh (read about that on our other blog), but on this trip we attempted (part of) the Quinag – there are three summits, but we didn’t tackle the three as it makes for a pretty long hike (of several hours) and was quite rough going over rocks and boulders where there was no defined path – at least that was what we found on the part that we did. However, for the section that we did walk, we got some pretty awesome views…

There is so much to explore from and around Clachtoll, we ended up wishing that we had stayed for longer, despite having visited the area twice before. Even the journey there is pretty spectacular, particularly once you join the NC500 and especially if you divert along (or later visit) the Coigach Peninsula (be prepared for some palpitations if you drive the latter on the single track road with it’s twists, turns and blind summits!) On the Coigach Peninsula, if you are canoeing from Old Dorney Harbour, there are lots of seals on the rocks and we managed to canoe really close to them. If you are more adventurous, and if the sea is calm, you can canoe out to the closer of the Summer Isles.

We celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary while we were at Clachtoll, spending the evening with some fizz and a barbecue on the beach (using our firepit). Bliss.

Please do browse our NC500 page for so many more places to visit and things to do in this area!

For the second part of our holiday, we planned to head to the campsite at Glenbrittle on the Isle of Skye. The closer we got to Skye the worse the weather became. When we reached Glenbrittle campsite the fog was so thick you could hardly see in front of you. The campsite is very remote and does not take pre-bookings, just turn up and get a spot. All the electric hook-ups were already gone, which we wouldn’t have minded had the weather been a bit better, but it was just unfortunate that when we arrived it was very bleak, almost zero visibility (as the fog was coming off of the sea) and cold. In the end we decided to try somewhere else, given that the next couple of days weather forecast wasn’t looking much better.

So we headed away from Glenbrittle and when we got a signal we called the campsite that we had stayed at previously in Dunvegan. They had spaces and said that the sun was trying to break through. We headed up there and although it wasn’t great, the weather was much better than it had been in Glenbrittle. We were also very lucky to have them manage to accommodate us with an electric hook-up as we were booking in for 5 nights.

Having been on Skye before, we knew what we wanted to do, however for a couple of these things, the weather had other ideas. The best thing we did, and fortunately on the best (only good) day weather-wise, was to head to Elgol with our canoe with the intention of just having a wee paddle around the bay. However, the water was so flat calm that we ended up paddling all the way over to Loch Coruisk (4 miles each way), which we had previously done on a boat trip back in 2018.

It was dry, with sunny spells, but rather hazy. Here are some photos of the trip, including one of the seals that were sunning themselves on the rocks…

Returning from our rather long paddle, we stopped off at the bar at the Sligachan Hotel for dinner. I said that I would drive (for a change) so that Paul could enjoy a “whiskey flight”. My wine might look large in the photo, but it was just a small one!

We had hoped to do some more canoeing, but never got round to it due to either the weather or the tides. However, we did manage to get out to the Coral Beach between showers (about a 5 mile drive from the campsite followed by roughly a 1 mile walk) and a walk to the Quirang (which, along with the Fairy Pools, is our joint favourite walk on Skye – unfortunately we didn’t manage to get any more good weather to do the Fairy Pools this time).

On our last evening, we booked the Old Schoolhouse restaurant in Dunvegan for dinner. We would highly recommend this restaurant. I had the best Cullen Skink soup yet for my starter, and the sticky toffee pudding that we shared for dessert was divine!

On returning home, we had a LOT of stuff to dry out, not least the tent, which had to be put up (as best we could) in the back garden! All our gear is pretty much piled up now in our spare room as we await our next trip to Langdale in the Lake District (hopefully 2nd time lucky – the last one was cancelled due to lockdown…)

If you have enjoyed reading this short blog, please use the Like and Share buttons below, and don’t forget to browse our website menus for lots of other trips and ideas!

We also have some books available from Amazon that might be of interest – check out our NC500 guide, or 10 Great Days Out From Glasgow. (Disclaimer – The links given to the books are Amazon Affiliate links, so we may earn a commission on any relevant purchases – the purchase price is not affected by this however).

This one has been on our “To Do” list for something like 20 years now, and we finally got around to it on Sunday (better late then never!)

We heard about Cumbrae from friends who many years ago told us about their day trip over to cycle around the island. It’s only 10 miles to go all the way round, and when they said it was relatively flat they weren’t kidding! It’s a very easy and pleasurable cycle, with very little effort required, so this is something that is suitable for anyone who can ride a bike, regardless of fitness. There was also very little traffic, and most of the “traffic” we encountered was other people who were also cycling around the island.

The ferry goes over from the popular seaside town of Largs. Parking was easy as it was a Sunday, we parked on the single yellow lines on Bath Street near the ferry terminal (we weren’t sure about parking, so we just drove up to the ferry terminal and asked advice when we arrived). There is also a big car park very close to the ferry terminal, on the promenade, where you can park for £5 for the day.

We left doing this trip until the schools went back as we had heard it was very busy during the summer and some people were having to wait quite a long time for a space on the ferry. Once you arrive on Cumbrae, if you’re on foot, you then need to catch the bus into Millport, then only town on the island, which is about 4 miles from the ferry port. Both the return ferry tickets and return bus tickets cost us £3.50 each, so £7 per person plus bike hire if you don’t bring your own.

On arrival we got off at the last bus stop where the bus turns around. The main road through town has the beach on one side and shops etc on the other. Walking back from the final bus stop, in less than 5 minutes you pass two bike hire places – On Your Bike and Mapes of Millport – we used the latter and got a bike each for the rest of the day for just £8 per bike. Both places also had electric bikes and 4-seaters (2 side-by-side in the front, and 2 in the back), both of these were also popular and we saw quite a few people on them during our cycle. The good thing about going over in September is that the season is tailing off, so there is no need to pre-book the bike hire, there were plenty available.

Everything about the trip was remarkably easy. The ferries are frequent, every 30-45 minutes, the bus is timetabled to drop off and meet the ferry without any waiting around, the bike hire was easy to find as the 2 shops mentioned were on the main road and we passed them on the bus. Parking in Largs was easy, possibly helped by it being a Sunday and near the end of the season. Even the weather was kind to us, with a slightly drizzly start to the day turning to sunshine later on, it ended up like a nice summer’s day.

We spent about 2 hours cycling round, as we made lots of stops for photos along the way. About 2/3rds of the way round (we went anti-clockwise, so we headed back towards the ferry first) there is a café with a great view and lots of big windows to look out from. It was the only place we saw where you could stop for food or drinks outside of Millport itself. Unfortunately, it was closed due to Covid (reopening soon), so we didn’t get to experience it. However, there was also parking opposite and some picnic benches, plus public toilets, so it’s one of many nice spots around the island where you could have a picnic.

Once we returned to Millport, we took the bikes back and headed to the Newton Bar in town for lunch. There’s not a huge choice of places to eat in town, but we were happy with this one. We got a table near the window where we could feel the sun coming through on our skin and see out to the beach.

We finished our day on Cumbrae with a stroll along the Millport beach promenade from one end of town to the other (which isn’t very far) and then hopped on the bus back to the ferry and Largs, where we took another short stroll and enjoyed some ice cream before driving home.

An excellent day, within easy reach of Glasgow, which we would highly recommend! If you enjoyed reading this short blog, please use the Like and Share buttons below – thanks!