The thrill of the camp part 1...

A few weeks back Gurn decided that to celebrate the end of his Uni course he wanted to go camping. Myself and BMan agreed that it would be fun and booked appropriate time off work and got ourselves organised. (This mainly involved realising exactly what camping equipment we didn't own and going out to buy it) After a whole day of shopping we became fully kitted campers... On Monday we met up with Gurn and got food shopping for the week, I planned meals out for the days we were going to be away and made sure we took everything, well nearly everything, that we needed (We did have to improvise on a colander on day 1 & 2 for both pasta and rice but I think we did well)

Tuesday morning came and we piled everything into the car - eventually - The boys packed the car and told me it was finished and full, only for me to wander into BMans room and realise that my sleeping bag and our tent were still lying on his bed...I spotted a problem at that point and suggested that we really should take the tent...otherwise we were all going to be very cosy in Gurns 3 man :s

We arrived 2 and a bit hours later in Aviemore, and decided to grab a couple of things in the town before finding a site (especially as I realised we had forgotten to bring cutlery). We grabbed lunch and plastic forks in Tesco, Gurn bought a local map in the Tourist Information shop and BMan and I headed to Blackwells to grab a couple of books. We eventually bought some books and found a games section in the shop which also lead to us buying Boggle and a deck of playing cards.

After a long hard stare at the map, I pointed out an area that I thought looked good to camp in, Gurn had other ideas so we agreed finally to drive up the road and if we spotted any of the turn offs marked on the map as tracks we would take them. About 20 miles later we realised that we had driven off the edge of the map and turned round, heading for the area that Gurn fancied. We stopped and got out the car for a bit of a wander but after 20 mins of walking realised that the path we were on really wasn't offering many good places to camp.
Somehow after driving around a bit more we found ourselves driving up a road that stopped and crossed the A9 and led to another opening on the other side so after a very quick nip across we found ourselves on a dodgy track leading into the woods. BMan spotted a good camp site pretty quickly and after a little more of an explore in the car (much to Gurns dismay) we went back to the spot and finally camped...

Dinner ensued and we settled...I tried to hold off taking too many photos and I wanted to save them for the sunrise