I was woken at 5am by the most peculiar sound. The sun had just started to rise and the light in the tent was grey and weak. It was still cold, and I could see my breath hovering above me as I lay wrapped, cocoon-like, in a thick sleeping bag. Only my wooly-hatted head poked out.
The sound that had woken me was like a football rattle crossed with a chicken. There would be one short, sharp “buck” and then it would release like a spring, before slowly winding down “go-back, go-back, go-back”. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. It was no good. Now I needed to pee.
My boyfriend and I clambered out of the tent. We threw off the blanket and the sleeping bags, stepped out and pulled on coats and boots. The buzz of the zip broke the still air, and we tumbled out into a pristine August morning in Braemar.
The landscape before us was clear and fresh, devoid of any human life. In the distance, we could see another tent, but we were all that stirred. The thick heathland rolled away towards the horizon in all directions, before rearing upwards in vast mounds. Where we were in the middle, a shallow river ran along the floor of the valley.
The strange noises were coming from all around us now. I took a step towards the bronze undergrowth, the sounds coming loud and clear, but I couldn’t see a thing. The red grouse, as I later discovered they were, were so well camouflaged that I couldn’t see them even though they must have been just a few feet away from me.
We sat out in front of the tent and drank piping hot tea, eating jam spread thickly on bread, and watched the sun emerge over the hills. The red grouse slowly quietened and a lone car came into view on the single road that went in and out of Braemar. We packed up the tent, did a quick litter pick, and went on our way.
How to wild camp
A real highlight of travelling in Scotland is the fact that wild camping is legal. This means that you can pitch your tent wherever you want, within reason. You can’t camp on private land (unless you get permission) and you have to follow the countryside code and not make a nuisance of yourself. You also need to be a certain distance from roads and you’re not allowed to park up campers and cars wherever you like.
When we wild camped we made sure that we only stayed in a spot for one night, we litter picked when we left (bagging our own rubbish and collecting litter that wasn’t ours) and we left the car on the road in a sensible parking spot so as not to crush any precious flora, or block the local roads. It’s also important to think about how you’re going to deal with human waste when you wild camp. We frequented cafes and pubs to avail ourselves of the facilities, but we did take an emergency trowel just in case we needed to bury anything. Don’t pee near water and move on often so that you’re not constantly going to the toilet in the same place.
We also only cooked on our camping stove because it’s really important not to start any fires that might get out of control or pollute the environment with ash. (Some plants need a very specific soil PH to flourish and fire remains can throw this off balance.) We were sad to see at a few places we went that the people who had stayed before us had not followed any of these rules, and these beautiful isolated spots were marked by fires and strewn with plastic.
Why wild camp
It might seem daft to spend the night out in the middle of nowhere, away from any available toilets, but it really is a nature experience unlike any other. Campsites are great for longer holidays but nothing can beat the experience of waking up all alone in the very heart of nature. There’s no light pollution and no noise to drown out the birdsong. It is a privilege to be able to be out in nature like this, and you never know what you might see. Had we simply driven past this quiet, riverside spot in Braemar, we would never have known there were red grouse there. As it was, we got treated to a full-voiced, brazen, Scottish dawn chorus.
Next time we wild camp in Scotland, the plan will be to leave the car and walk out into the wild with minimal kit to camp, and get truly off the beaten track!
Wild camping was one of my 30 nature experiences to have before 30.
Emma Pocklington 