Arran’s West Coast a Wild Camping Paradise, Scotland by Motorhome

We’ve been on the Isle of Arran for a week now and we’ve been blown away by the place. From the friendliness of the locals to the scenery and walks. We thought it couldn’t get any better, then we reached the west coast.

We’ve been travelling clockwise around the island following the coastal road. In reality you can’t get lost here as there aren’t many other roads. The villages have a few side roads. And there’s the ‘String Road’ which cuts across the island connecting Blackwaterfoot in the west with Brodick in the east, but that’s about it.

You’d think that as this is the main road it would be busy. It’s not, especially on the west side. I went for a run along it this morning. In the half an hour I was out I was passed by the local bus, two cars and two campervans – who were both leaving their overnight positions.

That’s the big draw of the west side of the island for us. There are hardly any houses along a big stretch of it, so the coastal road has become a bit of a mecca for motorhomes and campervans to wild camp.

After a very peaceful night wild camping in the King’s Cave car park, we drove about a mile to the car park for the Machrie Moor Stone Circles. There’s a no overnighting sign in the car park, but we didn’t intend to stop there, we were there for the walk to see the standing stones and stone circles.

The path leads to several sets of stone circles, with information boards telling us the timeline for the site. The first signs of a settlement here were in 3500BC! A thousand years later in 2500BC wooden circles were built and farming started on the land – this was around the time Stonehenge was built.

It took another 700 years for the stone circles to be built here in 1800BC, then a further 50 years before they started to be used as burial sites. Finally in 800BC, after being occupied for around 2700 years, the site turned into peaty moors due to climate change (yes it’s not a new thing), and the settlers had to move to higher ground.

We pretty much had the place to ourselves and made sure we left a donation in the box in the car park as this is a great place to visit and it must take some upkeep. We’ve come across several honesty/donation boxes on this trip and always put some money in. I much prefer it that way instead of wondering if it’s OK to use/visit/stay something or somewhere.

We only drove about another mile along the coast until we found a park up for the night. There are loads of them. Several already had campervans and motorhomes in situ. The spaces are just grass areas or laybys next to the road, but with no houses around wild camping is tolerated. We knew from Park4Night that the layby we’d parked in was the turning point for the school bus, but it was Saturday and we were only staying one night, so it wasn’t an issue.

Across a stream from our park up was The Dougarie Boathouse. A very lovely wedding venue, looking out over the Kilbrannan Sound. We checked google and it said it was closed until Monday – it seems google doesn’t know everything.

A chap popped by and asked if we were staying the night. We said we were planning on and was it a problem, ‘Not at all’, he replied. ‘I’m going to a wedding there and was going to park my van here if you were leaving. If you’re not, I’ll pop it a bit further up the road’. Now that’s welcoming.

In the afternoon we took a walk up to Loch Iorsa, a remote salmon fishing location. Jay had run up here earlier and said how pretty it was. We only saw one other group of walkers on the five mile route, and had the loch to ourselves. We kept checking the tops of the hills for stags, as surely that’s where they always stand, but didn’t manage to spot any. For a beautiful sunny weekend, I’m surprised at how quiet everywhere is. I guess everyone else is on the east coast of the island.

Back at the van, we peeped over the hedges between us and the boathouse to see the bride arrive. With our windows open to keep cool we could hear laughter and cheers throughout the ceremony. As the sun set the happy couple made their way onto the beach for photos in front of the setting sun, as their guests cheered, clapped and danced to a ceilidh band. We had one at our wedding, so listening in to the hoots of laughter brought back happy memories.

This morning I went for a run along the coast road and spotted another great spot to park. It’s not on Park4Night (which is where we’ve been finding all our park ups this trip), but the space 10m along from us is. I guess if they were all put on there this patch of coast would be nothing but parking dots. We decamped from the school bus turning point and moved in here.

We’re a bit closer to the road, so we’ve got our steady legs down to minimise rocking as the odd bit of traffic goes past, but it’s worth it for the view out of our windows. All along the beach next to us are seals basking on the rocks at low tide. We counted at least 12, with a group of 4 right opposite where we’re parked.

Jay couldn’t resist the crystal clear water, and once the tide had come in and the seals had all left their rocks for a swim, he went for a snorkel. A couple of curious seals hung around to see what he was, but keeping their distance, as he did of them. He also kept his distance from the huge barrel jelly fish in there like we’d seen up the coast on our walk to the King’s Caves.

We both sat on the beach looking out at the seals and sea in the sunshine and agreed, it can’t get any better than this. Our original plans were to catch the ferry off the island in the next couple of days.

Instead, we’ve booked into the campsite at Lochranza for a couple of nights to decide what to do. The weather looks like it may finally break next week, so we may head back to the mainland, or we could very easily end up spending our whole trip on Arran.

Ju x