I'll do a quick gallop through the rest.
I had no trouble getting to Ullapool that morning on 28% - it was less than 30 miles and a drop of 800 feet. Got charged, but the boat trip I booked was cancelled because of poor visibility. This was a surprise as the sun was splitting the sky and the visibility looked perfect, but I think there was a temperature inversion causing a bank of cloud right where the trip was going.
I had another drive to a place where you can actually see Loch Maree (as opposed to the occasional glimpse of water between the birches lining the roadside) then headed for Lochinver and Clachtoll. I knew the Clachtoll campsite was full, and
@QLeo, who lives in the area, was able to tell me the Achmelvich sites were also full. I saw a nice camping possibility by the roadside, but then I saw a smaller campsite in Clachtoll itself which had space, and foolishly decided to go there. Not one of my better decisions.
I made a detour to meet
@QLeo, also met Goth Leo and saw the off-grid set-up with the pile of lead-acid batteries, the solar panels and the wind turbine, a very impressive arrangement.
I should have gone back to the roadside spot I had noted (which QLeo had also suggested) and only if that was taken tried the small camp site by the shore. But for some reason I went back to the camp site and started to set up. Then the owner (whom I had phoned - it was a very ad-hoc set-up) appeared. This was the point when I discovered he wanted £20 for one car for one night in a rough site where the only actual facility was a standpipe for fresh water, It was also the point when I should have told him where to put his £20 and gone back to the roadside spot, but I was already more than half set up and like an idiot I paid him. For information, the going rate for these places in camp sites
with decent facilities is £12. The one I didn't get into the previous evening was £7.50.
So here was the problem. If you're by yourself in a roadside spot you probably have reasonable privacy, so you can get dressed and undressed beside the car without too much loss of modesty, and can sneak off to find a suitable patch of grass if need be without being observed. If you're in a camp site you have less privacy, but it's convivial, and there are toilet/shower blocks where you can change, and obviously no need for patches of grass. In this place there was no privacy and no facilities.
Campervans on all sides, and the side of the car I had positioned alongside the wall of the derelict cottage in the middle of the site, for privacy, turned out to be right where the canoeists were washing the sand off their canoes. The campervan facing me, which had had its curtains closed, opened them to watch the sunset and didn't close them again till 9.30 so I was overlooked by the two people sitting at the window all that time. (My front windscreen cover hasn't yet arrived.) Once these curtains were closed I could start to get to bed. No facilities, and all the useful-looking patches of rough grass were overlooked, so it was a walk in the dark with a torch down on to the beach and below the high tide mark. Repeat performance in the morning after I'd managed to get dressed between the two open (and curtained) right-hand doors of the car. [ETA: I forgot the part where I was about to get into bed when I realised my airbed was half-deflated. I hadn't closed the bung carefully enough. I had to wake up VtL again, get the pump out of the box, and re-inflate it. This was particularly embarrassing - it's noisy - due to the fact that a neighbouring campervan had complained that I was still playing my radio at 8.30pm.]
[ETA again: I also forgot about the semaphore thing. There was more breeze than usual, and although it didn't blow the magnetic curtains off the DRLs, it caused them to flap up a bit, sometimes with part of the curtain lying on the bonnet of the car. If anyone was watching it must have looked like some weird sort of semaphore. I think I was the only person who noticed, but it was slightly annoying to me. I was wondering about some way to stick the bottoms of the curtains down. I even warned the couple in front of me at Durness about it, and he said he'd reverse his car to sit between my lights and their tent if necessary, but in fact the curtains didn't move that night. Clachtoll was just jinxed.]
£20 for that, what a bloody nerve. He saw me coming. Obviously.
I went into Lochinver in the morning to charge the car, and had an absolutely magnificent lunch at a place called Delilah's. Steak frites done with about a dozen different sorts of mushroom, and garlic. (I should have taken a photo.) Then I headed north again. I got further than I thought I might, because I decided driving was more fun than doing more tourist things. I managed to get milk and bread in Scourie despite its being Sunday, but then headed on, reaching the camp site in Durness around four.
What a contrast. Stacks of space, fantastic views. Toilet and shower blocks, facilities for washing up cutlery/crockery, and coin-operated washing machines. For the standard £12 charge. Also, a closed hatch with a sign above reading "Breakfast Bar". I was able to change in the clean and well-appointed Ladies room, and wash in hot water. I had a comfortable night, slept till almost nine, then when I was going back to the toilet block to get dressed I saw the breakfast bar was open. Bacon roll (three rashers) and a cup of tea for £5. So I didn't need to get the kettle out in the morning at all, neither to wash nor to make tea.
By this time it had clouded over and the forecast suggested rain in the afternoon. The car charger was only a couple of hundred yards from the entrance to the camp site, so I gave Caliban the full CPS-permitted hour and set off south. It was still quite nice in the morning and I took more minor roads rather than the direct route. I stopped for lunch in a layby that would have been another nice place to camp, and made it to the Inverness superchargers mid-afternoon. These are in a multi-storey car park which Google initially deposited me at the EXIT to, but in the end I got in and Caliban was getting 87 kw. I was getting coffee in a nearby café. You don't have to pay for parking if you're only charging your car.
QLeo had warned me about the startling loss of range seen as you drive south out of Inverness, as you're climbing all the time, so I took plenty on. My feeling was that if I was still ahead of the game by the summit of the Drumochter pass I'd be fine, as that's about 1,500 feet and Perth is virtually sea level. I had five miles in hand at that point, and I was fine. Although I knew there were plenty 50 kw units around if I'd miscalculated. As I got over the summit the weather was plunged from a bit overcast but basically nice, to fog and cold and threatening rain. The weather in the south of Scotland I'd seen on my solar array monitor on my phone, and had been trying to get away from.
The Perth superchargers are up at the top of a big car park at the Broxden services. There's a McDonald's, but it's better to get something from their drive-through window and take it up there to eat in the car, especially when it's dark. Probably even better to drive through the town centre on the way there (rather than take the bypass) and pick up a proper fish supper or a pizza or something.
M90 closed on the way home, so diverted through Edinburgh. Then the A702 was also closed, so I ended up getting home over the moor road in the fog which was too thick to see where the passing places were. Fortunately I only met one Land Rover and we squeezed by. Got home at 9.30 with Caliban on 17%.
Went out this morning to visit the body shop for an estimate on the damage, and collect the cat, and by the time that was done Caliban was on 8% and ready for another shot at the long charge tonight.
And that's about it. Super fun, very comfortable, cheapest possible way of doing it short of backpacking a tent, just needs a bit of practice on what to take, where to put things and how to do things. A bit more about that last later. But we're home now, and ready for the obvious onset of real autumn weather.
