Wild Camping Ban Around Loch Lomond & Trossachs

In a recent post on our motorhome trip to Scotland, I waxed lyrical about these freedom to camp and motorhome park relatively freely in Scotland (although it’s important to remember that freedom of access off road does not extend to motorised vehicles).

It seems that as always, too much of a good thing means that it gets abused. Camping is to be banned in certain areas of the Trossachs National Park and Loch Lomond, starting from April 2011. The proposals received a 60% approval rate in a public survey and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority representative Ruth Crosbie said that it was a “tough dilemma” as the “area was being wrecked by a small number of campers, and we struggled to find a solution that didn’t penalise legitimate, responsible wild campers”.

It’s all the more frustrating as the guidelines you are asked to follow when wild camping on public land in Scotland are not exactly arduous or unreasonable:

Seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? Yet in the area around Loch Lomond, campers have been ignoring these rules and damaging trees, starting fires and leaving a mess behind. So now everyone will be banned…

(I know this is not really a motorhome-specific post, but in time, it probably will have a knock-on effect in terms of overnight parking restrictions for motorhomes. Plus, it’s just worth highlighting, I think.)