Camping wild won’t be the easiest night’s sleep ever, but it will be one you remember says Jenny Walters.

LET’S BE HONEST. There is a lot to be said against camping. The ground tends to be hard, the outside is very cold when you need that inevitable pee at 3am, and trying to get dressed in a space little bigger than a bin bag would make a contortionist swear. Wild camping can be even harder. That loo break doesn’t end at a flush, but a patch of dirt. There’s no shower block for a hot sluice after your walk, but instead an icy river or a single wet-wipe. Dinner will be something that was once fresh, is now dehydrated, and you hope will revive to something edible with the addition of boiling water.

But, but, none of that matters because of where you are. Camping wild means you get to stay in the mountains, or the moors, or whatever amazing place you’ve been walking all day. My favourite time of day outdoors has always been the evening. I love how about 4pm on a summer day things get mellow. Any crowds are thinning out, the light is long and golden, and later, as twilight gently falls, it feels like the world is returning to the wild things. If you camp out, you get to be one of those wild things. And if you’re one of those people that likes mornings, they’re pretty special too, with a mountain dawn just the zip of a tent door away.

The first time I tried it I was nervous. I was headed into the deepest Cairngorms and I had a lot of questions. How will I cope with carrying all that stuff into the hills? (Fine, but walking poles are a godsend.) How will we find a site? (This is the fun bit – all you basically need is a bit of flat ground in a view you

like.) Where will we get drinking water? (Note streams and rivers as you walk in or check your map. Boil the water to make it safe.) What about that missing toilet block? (Pee as you would on a long walk, bury anything more substantial, both should be at least 100 feet from any water.) Is it legal? (Yes in Scotland, and on Dartmoor, and it’s tolerated in upland areas elsewhere if you take care to leave no trace.)

And perhaps most pressingly, would I even like it? The short answer is hell yes. The long answer is if you catch me with a dreamy look in my eye

I’m probably thinking of steam billowing from a mug of coffee beneath skies so dark

I could see the Milky

Way, of a silence broken only by the lap of the loch at my doorstep, of sleeping out there among the mountains. The hard ground and the single wet-wipe? I barely remember those.

For more information: outdooraccess-scotland.scot has excellent info about the nitty-gritty of wild camping