The west coast in October

By the second week of October roughly two-thirds of the sites we would use in July have closed. This sounds like a problem and functions as an advantage: the sites that stay open do so because they have proper hardstanding, frost-protected water and owners who live on site.

We covered 1,180 miles over nineteen nights, using eleven sites and two nights of authorised off-grid parking. Average spend on pitches was £26 a night.

Planning around light

Sunset moves from 18:40 to 17:50 across three weeks. That removes an hour of arrival time, and arriving in the dark at an unfamiliar site with a seven-metre vehicle is worth avoiding. We adopted a rule of being pitched by four, which shortened driving days to about ninety minutes and improved the trip considerably.

What we would do differently

We carried too much. Three weeks of clothing for two people is a payload problem and a storage problem, and laundry is available almost everywhere. We also underestimated heating fuel: the diesel heater consumed around 0.35 litres a night, more than double our summer figure.

The sites worth returning to

Two stood out. Kilnsey Beck, for hardstanding that drained through four days of rain, and Carrick Shore, which is exposed, basic and has the best evening light we recorded anywhere on the trip.

Neither has a bar, a pool or a shop. Both had space in October, and both were full when we checked the following August.