Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

By the time we'd faffed about at the campsite and eventually left, allowing for a quick detour for coffee and to have a look at the something-or-other Wheel (I'll amend the website when I remember what it was called!), we arrived at the Wallace Monument about 20mins before closing time. Polite enquiries inside confirmed we'd be ok to 'unofficially' park up in their car park overnight - hurrah, a freebie at last! We got Moglet on the flattest piece of ground we could find, then hiked up the hill to have a look at the Monument in the fading light. The views from the top of the hill itself were fabulous, the whole of Stirling spread out in front of us, the Castle off to the right and the Firth of Fourth squiggling about all over the place. The skies were so clear that in the very far distance you could see the hills of Lomond, practically the other side of Scotland!

We mooched about on the top for a bit, wandered down a muddy track to get a different viewpoint, and then came back to the Monument to watch it get dark. By this point the wind was picking up nicely, we didnt have a torch with us and there was still the downhill bit to deal with before we got back to base for the night, so we headed off. A very pleasant, if slightly odd, night was spent parked up there - who knew a car park in the middle of nowhere would be so busy?! The next morning, a resident of one of the houses whose garden adjoins the car park was decent enough to tell us we had to move immediately, no overnight camping was allowed, and she was going to call the police straight away! No amount of 'we asked the owners of the site and they said it was ok', 'the lady who's house we're actually next to said it was ok', 'theres no signs anywhere saying we cant stay overnight' or 'feel free to call them, we're off to do some sightseeing' would placate her. Honestly, some people need to get a bit of a life -- we werent doing any harm, there were no lights or noise from us to disturb anyone, we parked against the backs of houses and garages so no-one would have to see the fearfully awful sight of Moglet out of their windows, and bottom line is we asked first and were given permission (albeit unofficial). She seemed a little uptight to me, massively overreacting to the situation...maybe I should have asked if I could put her photo on the website??

Anyway, the Monument itself is a fantastic piece of stonework, and I'm not usually a bit architecture fan - you can see it was put together by people who knew what they were doing and wanted to do it well. Its basically a tower with a spiral staircase all the way to the top, with a few floors to stop off at on the way with various displays at each. You get given one of those pre-recorded guide handset thingys when you pay (half price for us crusty old Caravan Club members! :-)). The main draw is the building itself, the displays and the 'tour' is a bit poo, and contradicts itself more than a fair few times. Seeing Wallace's sword was kind of weird though, it must be at least 5ft long - bad enough to have to wield something like that for hours at a time in battle, but how the hell do you carry it from day to day withough hamstringing yourself??

Once we got back to Moglet (and a conspicious lack of local plod or frustrated housewife) we headed back on the road to a place called Auchterarder...