Galloway Forest and surrund area

[garygiles1963]

Hi all,

I am hoping to get up to Galloway Forest and surrund area for a couple of weeks from Feb 11.

I would very much appriciate and reccomendations for places to visit, camp, wild camp and tracks I should drive.

I want to test out my setup before going to Western Alps in June/July.

Regards
Gary

 

[Chris]

Gary, I can put you in touch with someone who knows the area intimately and used to run trips actually. I spend a lot of time up there too.

Tracks are a bit difficult as it's Scotland and Green Lanes don't exist in the same way as they do down here. We camp up there but it's kind of our land so we give ourselves permission. There are some nice camp sites, the one at Loch Ken allows vehicles like ours. But as I said, I know someone who might be happy to chat to you in terms of places that you can visit that are more remote but not illegal.

 

[garygiles1963]

Chris,

That would be amazing, I would very much appriciate the conatct.

Regards
Gary

 

[stumog]

On the OS map there are old military roads. Are you allowed to drive them ?

 

[garygiles1963]

what area you looking Stumog?

 

[Jacob100]

The Ken Bridge Hotel serves real ale and good, gamey food and has a basic campsite right by the river.

 

[Chris]

A great deal of the area is Forest Enterprise (Forestry Commission) and you simply can't drive on it or camp or anything. There is a forest drive off the Raider's Road where you buy a ticket like a permit. That's quite good and you can camp at the Otters Pool.

 

[stumog]

She I was up near glencoe on the a82 area was a few roads that were dirt but had a unlocked gated road

 

[Chris]

The fact there's a gate might be a clue Stu. They generally don't lock them during the day because there's few people up there and it's more trouble than they can be bothered with, but they lock them when they leave. There are some fantastic logging and forest roads in the middle of nowhere like the Back Hill of Bush but we had to get permits to drive them and fill in insurance and flaming risk assessments too.

 

[Towpack]

There are many unlocked gated and non gated tracks in that area. There’s also many in the Argyl & Bute area that run for miles and just disappear off into the distance but, as Chris as stated, there are no driveable Green Lanes as such. There is a “right to roam” act that covers large areas of Scotland but it doesn’t include vehicle access. There are many Forestry Commision “drives”, with several in the Trossachs area East of Loch Lomond but you couldn’t really class them as “off-roading” and camping isn’t allowed other than in designated areas. Still very nice areas to visit though.

 

[garygiles1963]

Thanks, I have marked your suggestions on the map.

G.

 

[Chris]

Just waiting to hear back from my local contact.

 

[stumog]

I would love to get on s9me 9f the estates t0 tour around.

Found a company quad bike tours near glencoe that have 55k acres ( so they say) of access but they want something stupid like £300 per day to let you use it

 

[garygiles1963]

that seems like alot of money to me!

 

[Chris]

Sheesh! There are places up there where you can do quad biking - with their quads. I'm sure it's less than that. A great deal of it up there is F.E as I said and open to the public for recreation. This means walking and some mountain biking - but that's the limit. Areas for shooting and off road driving are typically fully segregated or as much as possible by location. If you're a minority, don't expect to get equal access.