Loch Awe (Some) Camping Adventures

Aloha,

I've actually managed to tick quite a few things off of my summer bucket list already! 

From Monday the 16th June until Thursday the 19th I went camping at the lovely Loch Awe (pretty near Inveraray). 

Myself, my brother, his girlfriend Sally, Daniel, Zach, Emma, Craig an array of Domino's employees and the dogs all set off from our local Tesco's after a substantial food and drink hall at around 2pm. We had three cars and, luckily, I was in Sally's car which was loaded with Disney tunes and far better banter than the smelly boy's cars. We sang Disney songs for almost an entire 3 hours and it was great.

Upon arrival (after spending 2 hours lost trying to find our camp site) we quickly pitched up tents, had some burgers, blew up the inflatable kayak and we all went to swim in the loch! 

Sally's pretty picture of Loch Awe in the morning

Swimming in the Loch was such a fun experience and I just said how 'magical' everything was pretty much the entire time. Everyone took turns taking the Kayak out and playing with the dogs whilst we were swimming away in the Loch. 

Sally and I cheekily bought water guns in our huge Tesco haul and took them as weapons for the water (a much better idea in theory as splashing the water is definitely more effective...oops). 

The water was b-e-a-utiful, if not a bit chilly, and we swam around and chatted there for a long time before drying off and making a camp fire to sit at.

The Fire

So, we had quite a lot of fully grown, independant individuals on our camping trip and not one of us was capable of making a fire that lasts the night. The camp fire was the absolute bane of my existence on the trip, we spent SO many hours gathering twigs, branches, kindling etc for the fire and countless more making sure it stays on! But I am so glad that I did because the fire was such a communal area for everyone to sit around and chat and drink (I don't actually drink but they all do). On our last night we played a fun game of 'Dares' which resulted in Daniel being duck taped to a tree for a good hour or so and tormented by everyone who found it incredibly amusing. Bless him. 

Daniel was tented

Anthony pretending his best friend is a pinata

During the Days

The majority of our time was spent chilling out on the decking where we were camping. We were really lucky with our location. There were lots of trees to shade our tents (that let us sleep much easier without constant light coming in!), we were right next to the Loch and we had a beautiful decking to sit on and enjoy the sunshine and the lovely views. We crafted a make shift speaker for our iphones using a used pringle can and just sat listening to chilled summer playlists, talking, sunbathing, playing cards and amusing the dogs Penny and Misha. The dogs were so well behaved and adorable on the trip, I was so proud of them. Penny is a bit older and usually just slept or sat looking cute whereas Misha was constant hyper-action hyper-drive, insisting that everyone threw tennis balls and twigs for her. Needless to say, the animals kept us very amused on the trip. 

Such water babies, you can see the boys Kayaking in the background

Misha, her ball and the great outdoors 

Penny getting in on the card action

For food we mainly ate dry foods, pasta and beans. Such typical camping food essentials. On night 2 we boiled pasta on our camping stove, cooked beans in a pan on a disposable bbq and cooked Quorn sausages on the disposable bbq too! We didn't want to bring meat because none of us were too certain about food poisoning rules and we knew that Quorn would be totally safe, which it was. We put all of the ingredients together and created a pretty tasty meal!

On night 3 our stove ran out of gas (nightmare) and we just used disposable bbq's to cook corn on the cob, bread, beans and hot dogs. It sounds super odd but yet again it was pretty tasty. We cooked all our meals whilst sitting on the decking because we were so happy and chilled out there that we wanted to stay there for as long as possible. (There were also no midges there unlike nearer the trees where they ate us alive :( )

Emma, Me and Anthony sitting out on the decking 

Chef Tessa to the rescue, that straw hat was passed around so much.

Daniel and Zach chilling in the sun

Anthony posing

Another fun thing we did was make a tire swing! We (by we I mean the boys and Sally) found an old tire by the loch and used some rope that someone had brought to make an awesome swing that amused us endlessly for the 3rd day!

The making of the tire swing

Alien Sally enjoying the swing

Our tragic but much loved fire

On the last day, we all woke up and took our tents down. We cleaned up the camp site, washed our dishes, took the bins away and drove home! The trip home was a lot easier without getting lost so it was a lot shorter. 

I'm happy with the cute little trip we went on, I'll definitely be joining them again next year. I was able to tick off:

Go camping, swim in a natural body of water, watch the sunset, watch the sun rise, make a camp fire and probably a few more off of my 25 things to do this summer list. It was that easy! 

Hopefully you enjoyed reading this and found it a little bit interesting. If you'd like more stuff like this then let me know in the comments and otherwise enjoy your life until next time :) 

-Tessatata   xoxo