22nd April 2025

Been a busy couple of weeks.  Summarised by – web, bookings, upgrades, routes and trip.

First off, my friends at BWAR are approaching completion of the website.   Exciting times with a logo (which reflects me/ScotCampers) and a customer journey that makes it as pain free as possible to interact with me.  I do hate a nasty experience when I go to book something on the laptop, or the phone.  Watch this space….. 

Ahead of the website being live however, I’ve used a kinda Airbnb site to get Bilbo out there.  Lots of enquiries and my French has had to up its game (four enquiries a la Francais!).  So, some bookings in the diary but the enabler will be the website.

Upgrades.  I reflected on my road trip/test to the Cairngorms last month and reckoned I could have had a better sleep.  Conscious I was only away for a couple of nights and hirers will be away for longer, I decided I needed to do something.  So, a few hundred pounds later, the van now has two premium self-inflating mattresses – one for upstairs (which deflates and stays in situ as you pull the roof down) and one that fits the Rock ‘n Roll bed in the back.  Last thing I want is folks having an uncomfortable time so had to be done.  Also got a hold of a couple of safety items.  Next on the list is the little things like corkscrew (v important!) and frying pan.

Routes.  Having walked or biked in most parts of Scotland, I have a reasonable knowledge of where to go to avoid the crowds (if that’s what you want, of course).  I also have my go-to places of course (Glencoe, Islay, Speyside) which I thought I should try and share.  So, last week, I penned my first one-pager route.  This was based around a 4 day trip from ScotCampers HQ and not overly taxing around driving .  Lots of people provide this sort of information but what I hope will be different is that I have been to every stop on this trip – down to the petrol station and coffee shop.  Route 2 will be online soon. 

With the couple of upgrades made – oh, and AWSOME weather in Scotland, another road trip was due.  I did a reverse of a trip I did on my motorbike a couple of years back.  This was the NE250 – 250 mile trip in North East of Scotland taking in places like the Montrose Basin, Buchan, Portsoy and crucially for me Pennan (Google it around filming locations – am a massive Local Hero fan).  Good trip, learnt a lot, made some improvements to the van to help customers and came back with one brown arm (window open the whole way)!

I’ve learnt a lot over the last couple of months – particularly from driving the van around Scotland and putting myself in customer’s shoes.  One learn I will share with all potential hirers will be around average speed – over my last three trips, this has been consistent at 37 to 38mph – and this includes motorway miles.  On single track, I’m down to 25mph.  Just good to have in mind when someone say, fancies doing the NC500 in a day! 

Thanks for reading.