A weekend glamping in the Cairngorms National Park

Over the Easter break we decided to spend a long weekend in the Highlands of Scotland staying at Wigwam Holidays Glenlivet glamping site in the Cairngorms National Park.

At the end of the main road in Tomintoul (the highest village in the Scottish Highlands) is our glamping site, when you think of glamping it conjures up images of a glorified shed in a middle of a farmer’s field, but nothing could be further from the truth here. Our cabin had a kitchen, dining area, en-suite bathroom, separate bedroom, heating, TV and outside our own fire pit and barbeque.

Next door to our accommodation was the Glenlivet Adventure Playground, this was Matthew and Holly’s highlight of the trip as they loved the zip wire there, we had the whole place to ourselves both times we went there.

Within Tomintoul there are a number of great places to eat, we went to the Richmond Arms Hotel and the Glenavon and can recommend them both for their great food, reasonable prices and friendly staff. Also in Tomintoul is the Tomintoul and Glenlivet Discovery Centre and Museum. If I am honest I would give this a mis, even though it only costs £5 to enter the museum is about the size of my front room and contains things such as a sewing machine, old skis, a few taxidermy animals and a VR headset to see the stars.

The whole area is within the Glenlivet Estate which is part of the Crown Estates Scotland and we set out to explore as much of it as we could which was accessible by car. We chose not to do any of the many walks around the estate due to the rainy weather.
 
First up we did a loop which encompassed Drumin Castle, a 14th century tower house, Blairfindy Castle, a 16th century tower house and has seen better days, and the Glenlivet Distillery, unfortunately due to Matthew and Holly’s age we were not able to do a distillery tour as you need to be 18 years old, so we just briefly looked around their visitors centre and shop.

After lunch back in Tomintoul we ventured to the Lecht Mine that had a pleasant short walk to get there. The Lecht mine is a former iron and manganese mine with just a building left.

We finished both days with a barbeque on our fire pit followed by roasting some s’mores.

The Glenlivet’s skies are fabulous for stargazing, and is registered as a Dark Sky Discovery Site. These are sites with little light pollution, easy access and great views of the night sky. From our cabin we could see so many stars and even a couple of shooting ones.
 
I realise we only scratched the surface for activities in the area, there is an abundance of walking and mountain biking trails around, but we just wanted to relax for a couple of days.

Why not check out our whole video from the weekend below: