Well, here I am now right next to the river Braan at Invermill Campsite up the A9 from Perth near Dunkeld. Out of the wind now at least.My bladder alarm woke me up at 2:30am last night with a non-negotiable order to go to the loo immediately, so I pulled on multiple clothes and my head torch and made my way across the field. For some reason at that exact moment, the old salt of the earth guy must have been in the same boat, as he was wandering around in the dark still watching memes on his phone. I made the executive decision to avoid drinking liquids after 8pm and see if that helped me sleep through the night. When I got back to my tent I slept fully clothed and uninterrupted in my sleeping bag and to hell with camping etiquette.
Not sure where I am, blogwise. I didn’t sleep well, but it was time to pack up the tent and be on my merry way. I called up Inver Mill Campsite just off the A9 a bit north from Perth, yesterday, but they rather disappointingly asked me to call back again in the morning of travel because they didn’t take advance bookings for tents. Made me feel like a second class citizen trying to see my GP about some ailment or other. What I do remember is firing up the volcano kettle, getting the fire going good and well in one go and waiting for the cracking sounds of the wood burning proper before sticking the volcano kettle on. I realised (again) that I need smaller bits of drier kindling to make the jump from newspaper to kindling, so I spent a little time the day before meandering around the field picking up dry twigs etc. This seemed to work.
I had breakfast, drank my tea, coffee and OJ, had more cereal (I do this thing now where when I’ve finished eating my first mini Kelloggs variety pack I still have milk left over in the bottom of the tiny bag, so I pour this into my second variety pack. This works exceptionally well if the first pack is coco-pops, because as we all know, they are so chocolaty they turn the milk brown, so I’m effectively then pouring chocolate milk onto my cheerios or whatever).
9:10am was soon upon us so I called up Inver Mill again and they deigned to grace me with their permission for me to pitch my ‘heaven sent’ on their grass somewhere. I thanked them most profusely, but I suspect my profuseness was lost on them, as will become clear later. I guesstimated my arrival time to be 3pm.
Anyway, conscious of the camping lesson I learnt back in the summer of 1994 while travelling through Europe to Latvia by van, it’s always better to take your tent down earlier, when it’s sunny, than later, when it’s pissing down. As I was doing so, the salt of the earth guy came into view in the field across the fence and said he was there to take his pony away and that it didn’t like the llamas. I asked him what its name was (the pony), and he said Obama. I enjoyed a good old chuckle and he lead Obama away and that was the last contact I ever had with the salt of the Earth guy. What an exit to a blog entry story.
It crossed my mind to ask Moira for a selfie before leaving but wasn’t quite organised enough (me - not her). We did wave to each other though, upon my departure. She seemed like a nice sort.
So I packed up the car and drove out of the camping field, bidding my farewell to the dogs and the llamas and the grass and the fields and the not that distant horizon and drove to Cupar without using the Satnav because I knew how to get there now as nothing quite fills in the surrounding blanks as going out a gate on foot and turning right.
Upon arrival at the Tesco/Burger King/ EV charging retail park, I plugged my Leaf in (even though it was only at 90%) and headed straight for the Costa for a small white Americano and a butter croissant (no more butter necessary, thanks, I said to the girl, I’m buttery enough! I didn’t say that.) Only to find that a) I couldn’t write my diary because I had no pen b) I couldn’t write my blog because there was no nearby plug socket and c) I could connect to the Wi-Fi (or as they say in France : wi-fi) and write a blog post and even upload pics from my phone. Oh the joys – the joys - of technology and d) I found a pen in my jacket pocket when I got up to leave.
Post about an hour and I remembered I had no ice left in my home-made coolbox and my cheese, ham and yoghurt were all therefore probably melting, so I packed up and went to Tesco to restock, cleverly using a trolley this time instead of a basket, because at the end of the day – why not? Why put your bi-ceps through unnecessary strain? There is no minimum limit to the stuff you put in a trolley. I can count on three hands the number of times (more than I can remember) where I’ve laboured under the weight of an overfilled basket. Why? Why? Just get a trolley every time you idiot! Maybe that’s where the term ‘basket case’ comes from. It’s almost as if someone invented a kind of waist-height basket on wheels to serve that very purpose. Anyway, I managed to purchase quite a few things on my increasingly lengthening ‘Things I should have Brought’ List, key items being: - Water container
- Cereal bowl
- Metal tin
- USB Iphone cable
- Smaller kindling
- BBQ tongs
- Tent pegs
- New thermos cup
- Chocolate digestives √
- Camping Cutlery
- A plate
- Mini vacuum cleaner
- Ctechi Solar panels
- Threaded camping gas cannister
- Noise-cancelling headphones
- Plastic container for ham and cheese.
When I got back to my car and put the ice and other cold-stuffs in the cool box I was preparing to hit the road again, I paused for thought. What did I really know about Cupar anyway? Would there be any reason to arrive at Inver Mill Campsite six hours early? You know people are always going on about Cupar, saying how notable it is, and not just a small town to drive through on your way to St Andrews. I decided to pull up outside a nice cottage on the far side of the town and walk back to see what all the fuss was about.
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| The employees here must have had a very exciting time |
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| I paid 30p for this toilet so wanted to get my money's worth! |
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| A nice church, Cupar |
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| A nice river, Cupar |
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| A nice remembrance statue |
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| Dr Floyd, inventor of the allover seeded bun |
It's difficult to do Cupar without thinking of Interstellar (Cupar! Cupe!) but I did my best. I also popped into every charity shop I came across on the lookout for ticking more things off my 'What I should have brought' list. (See this is how wives are different from husbands. Wives already have this list in their head somehow, and that's why they take ages getting ready. Husbands are thinking, right fuck it, let's go, and then (if they don't let their wives do any packing for them) when they get somewhere they realise, 'Damn, I should have brought this, this, this and this,' and are fine with that. Correct me if you disagree, but men would rather go somewhere quickly without bothering packing the useful but non-critical stuff, than spend another hour thinking ahead and putting more in the car. Or at least I do. I brought the tent, didn't I?)
So I ticked off the BBQ tongs (for rearranging kindling in a fire), paper plates and tent pegs. I saw some sights (a nice church or two, some pleasing closes, a big black lab napping in the window of an estate agents) and then decided to have lunch at the back of a nice bakery called Fisher & Donaldson I believe. I ordered the Thai chicken soup with a chicken and cucumber sandwich on Dr Floyd, a cup of tea and a small strawberry tart, because for some reason I associated Fisher & Donaldson bakeries with strawberry tarts. Maybe you do too. Maybe everyone does. MAYBE ITS THEIR FLAGSHIP TART. Woops, pressed the capslock key there but you know what? It works.
So this long haired studenty type guy came over to take my order and I said I'd have the tuna cucumber sandwich on Dr FLoyd because I'm curious, and without skipping a beat he replied, yeah that's a guy we cut up into slices, and I said perfect. He had a very lazy but efficient way of serving the food which I appreciated: instead of walking all the way round the railing, he just leant over it and placed your items on the table. It turns out Dr Floyd is a kind of bread roll that is completely covered in sesame and other seeds - not just the top, but the side and bottom as well. It was delicious. My hat off to Dr Floyd and the waiter, with whom I felt we bonded over the sliced up guy thing, but didn't think it merited me asking if we could hang out further.
So I continued on my Cupar! adventure and found their very charming train station, a small river running through a park in the centre of town that made me think of Strathaven, and after the briefest of naps (I found the exact centre of the sun-drenched park and lay down with my cap over my eyes and my hands on my valuables) a lot of dried twigs and branches in said park, which it seemed almost obscenely satisfying to pick up and put in my new 'Folds up into a wee pouch' carrier bag that I'd just purchased.
After the station and the park, I went up the hill a bit to verify where the Tesco/Costa/Burger King retail park was in relation to it all, and then weaved my way back to the car, and drove off.
I arrived at Inver Mill Camp Factory at approx 3:40pm and was promptly shown to a patch of grass on a slope up to a barn. I wasn't happy with this, not when there seemed to be other more level unoccupied patches of grass closer to the river. I damned my rotten luck for booking two nights and considered driving off in contempt. Didn't they know I was writing a blog? I paused, trying to gether my thoughts. My more rational mind piped up again and said, "Well hold up old chap, give it some time. Some bad things turn out to be good and vice versa, what?" So I drifted round the site looking at the river and allowing myself to climitize and then decided that maybe I could just ask for a leveller spot. Should I mention I was a published author writing a book about campsites? (not strictly true, but you never know, someday) Was I a second class citizen because I was a solo camper? Should I ask them if they knew who I was? My two followers would be very unhappy to hear I'd been mistreated this way.
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| View from my tent, Invermill |
In the end though I decided this went against the ethos of what I was trying to do and decided to just ask, with a smile. So I did. Hello, I said. Yes, what can I do for you? I was just wondering if you happened to have a more leveller spot? We've had people sleep there before. Ah yes, perhaps in my younger years <winning smile> Well, let's see what else we have. How about that patch near the river? Perfect, thanks.
I'd had this epiphany while standing near my car wondering what to do: if I should just sleep in the car on the board and padded mat. I realised I could take half the mat and put it in the tent under my yoga mat to double the comfort. This I dually did.
Pre-sliced cheese, ham, mayo and bagel for dinner, followed by a carrot, tea, yoghurt and chocolate biscuit. As I was gazing out over the river (and even closer horizon) the woman came up behind me and asked me to move my car, as a French family had just arrived and were happy to pitch their tents in my slopey spot compared to the alternative - finding another campsite. This I dually did.
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| Melt in the mouth but are they one of your five a day? Can I just have five of these? |
These Thai lentil Kallo veggie cakes are my new best friends. You crunch into them and they yield gracefully. The spicy pepper hits you and then the mouthfulls submit to the merest hint of chewing and suggestion of saliva, before whooping down your gullet like kids going into a flume at a water park. Too much? I don't know. Seems about right.
Possibly due to my poor sleep the night before, despite my negotiation win, I was not in the best of moods as the day came to a close. There was a guy two tents down who had a very nice guitar (better than mine) playing very good, recognisable songs (better than me), and I decided to put into practice my trial based on the previous night's toilet visit and not drink after 8pm. Trouble was, this meant I couldn't have my second beer. Or drink tea. And I was cold and bored, so I just climbed into my tent and went to bed. Woke up to things still going on, music, drums (coming from across the river at some kind of outdoor party?) etc. at 11:30pm for the loo, returned to bed hoping it would all stop around midnight, and slept the whole night through. No rain drops. No mood for alliterations or other titillating wordplay. Just sleep.
I wonder if I snore.
