Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

We were looking forward to this bit of the run, mostly as an opportunity to see whether or not we wanted to come back to the Fort William/Loch Lomond area. We'd been told by more than one person what a fantastic area it was, how great the road was and generally its a fab place to be. Hmmm... I think part of the problem was in some ways, Moglet - she was just too big for the road, despite it being the main A road around Loch Lomond. There was blind bend after narrow road after crumbling edge after overhanging branches after oncoming traffic on our side of the road. Quite a stressy road to drive on in anything other than a car really. Would be a great road on a bike though.

As for Fort William itself, I have to say first impressions were a little disappointing, it seemed like not much more than a bigger version of Aviemore, quite expensive (£19 for a campsite pitch!) and touristy and not much else. However, once we drove out of the town and headed onto the road further south, the scenery really opened up and it was quite shocking to us to see the scale of everything - the mountains were so huge! The shapes and colours of the hills were very similar to what we'd been seeing for the last few weeks in Scotland, but the size here was so much bigger, it was really very impressive.

We'd decided (after much discussion!) to spend three days in a hotel in Lancaster while Moglet was being spruced up and MOT'd. As the hotel has a pool and we didn't expect to need swimmers for a trip around Scotland in winter so didnt have anything with us, we needed to stop off somewhere and find something suitable to wear - and nothing that was going to cost too much as we have nice stuff still packed up at Jason's dads - cue Tesco Extra in Glasgow! I managed to find something that fit (not very flattering but what do you expect for £15!) and Jason picked up some shorts in Boots for the same price. Bargains all round!

Finally finally we arrived in Haltwhistle some time after dark. We headed straight for the high street and bought ourselves a chinese takeaway then went on to the campsite. What we hadn't really thought about was that the site might be full! There was a charity walk along sections of Hadrians Wall on the Sunday, so more people than usual were camped there in anticipation. The problem wasn't helped by an extremely rude man being allowed to 'greet' guests on arrival and arrange where to get them parked up. When he came over to Moglet, Jason had already gone up to the house to speak to the lady owner we'd dealt with last time, and get us booked in for the night. Moglet was parked on their access drive, stopped exactly where their sign asks you to stop, with her engine running. Happy chap then comes over and asks if he can help - I explain Jason is up at the house getting us booked in. He says 'Well I'm here now, do you want a pitch or not?' When I calmly (biting my tongue hard!) tell him we're looking for two nights with hookup but Jason is sorting it, he then says they don't have any space for us, and certainly no electric hookup available. When I asked him if he had space if we didnt need electric, he said he might and did we want a pitch or not? Charming. I told him (for the second time) Jason was sorting things at the house so I didn't really want to say one thing to him and then find out Jason had agreed something else up at the house. This seemed to infuriate him even more, and a pair of headlights pulling onto the driveway behind us didn't help. He went off to be rude to them for a bit, coming back to me to tell me to move Moglet. I explained this wasn't possible as I didnt have a steering wheel in front of me, Moglet being left hand drive, and me not having a manual licence anyway. He then slapped his forehead and wailed 'Oh but you're blocking the whole bloody drive!' - as if we weren't parked exactly where his sign says we're supposed to stop and check in! At this point the car had been behind us for about 2 minutes and could have easily driven around us if happychap wasn't physically blocking their route which would take them onto the grass. Cue Jason returning from the house, confirming the nice lady had booked us in for two nights, no problem, just drive yourself up the hill and find a space. What on earth was the tantrum from him all about?? Such a drama queen. If it wasn't for the fact we were dog-tired and had a chinese getting cold in the footwell, I'd have told him where to stick his campsite and parked elsewhere. As it was, Jason hopped in and we parked up no worries.

We spent the next day getting caught up on the washing and preparing to leave Moglet for a few days, as well as eating our way through lots of food so it didn't have to go in the bin!

On Sunday morning we packed up and headed off to make the last leg of the journey to Atkinson Vos. We'd picked out a campsite for the night just a few miles away, and were looking forward to a relatively short journey and plenty of time in the evening to get packed up and organised.

Arriving there in daylight, the site owner was a lovely lady and as we were the only campers on site we had the shower and toilet block all to ourselves, and it was only £9 for the night, which was a bargain for outside of Scotland. They also do self catering cottages and pottery courses on site, so we're going to head back there after Lancaster and have a go at making some pots! I'm thinking its more likley to turn into a scene from Playschool than Ghost, but I'm sure it'll be fun :-)