In the summer of 1972, John and his two friends from school, Kevin Thomas and myself, Dai Thomas, decided to go on a road trip camping around Scotland. We initially were going to go in my A35 van but my dad very kindly lent us his Morris Oxford for the trip which made it much more comfortable.
There was no planning but we had a rough idea where we wanted to go. We thought we would cook all our meals out in the open, backwoods style!
With a borrowed tent, we were off and the first night we stopped at Pooley Bridge near Ullswater.

After a jam session at the campsite (we had brought our guitars), we abandoned the idea of cooking and went to the local pub. Kevin was buying the first round and John and I said that as we were going to Scotland, we should have whisky chasers as we thought that was the tradition.
Kevin duly bought 3 pints and 3 chasers but strangely enough we never had another chaser throughout the holiday (Kevin never forgot about that!).
We cooked a fry-up outside for breakfast the next morning, but that was the last bit of outside cooking we did on the holiday!
Our next stop was Edinburgh where we spent a couple of nights and we explored the city visiting the castle and other Edinburgh sights.  
We then decided to visit Oban. We must have left Edinburgh in the evening as I can remember getting lost in Glasgow well after dark and encountering a local bus as we went the wrong way down a one-way street after going round in circles for a while!
I must have driven through the night, but we reached Oban in one piece and pitched our tent at a local site.
A great memory of the Oban area was crossing the so-called “Bridge over the Atlantic”, a stone arch separating the mainland from Seil Island. We climbed a hill over the village of Ellenabeich and looked out towards the Isle of Mull and Easdale. As we descended, we could hear a piper playing in the centre of the village – very apt I thought.
Our last night in Oban was a Sunday and we were not impressed to find out that all the pubs were closed on a Sunday in Scotland in those days! We were lucky to find a steakhouse restaurant which had a great bluegrass duo playing as we ate – I remember that they did a great rendition of the famous banjo solo Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
We then moved on northwards to the Kyle of Lochalsh where we caught the ferry to the Isle of Skye. We camped outside Portree where we had haggis and chips from the local chippy – a first for us! We explored all around the island, making a full circuit and stopped at places that took our fancy, castles, the mountains and even crossing a rather dodgy wire suspension bridge over a river.
There was a storm that night and the zip on our tent flap broke so we had to stack our cases up to keep the rain out.
After Skye we travelled via Loch Ness to Inverness. On the way I remember seeing a “beware sheep” sign that had been doctored to look like the monster!
We were very surprised to find a Chinese restaurant in Inverness (don’t forget it was the early seventies) and had our meal there.
Our last stop on the holiday was back in Edinburgh where in the evening we walked from our campsite to a local hotel which looked very posh from the outside. When we went in, we were told it was waiter service only so we became rather worried about how much our 3 pints would cost. The waiter returned with the drinks and said “fifty ea”!
On no we thought, fifty pence each when a good pint normally cost about 14 pence, but what could we expect in a posh place like that. Fortunately, the waiter’s Scottish accent had got the better of us and the bill was actually fifty-eight pence in total, what a relief!  
The next day we drove home, a great holiday with lifelong friends.