Glentrool like to describe themselves as ‘an expedition base camp’ and it’s easy to see why. Around the campsite a cladding of pine trees merges into a gentle slope, tents scatter loosely within the grassy opening and walkers, returning from the nearest trail, pop out their camp stove and slip hiking boots from their weary feet. There are no prayer flags hanging in strings like they have in the Himalaya and no skidoos like they may have in the arctic – these are expeditions of a more civilized kind – but within Galloway Forest Park this is certainly a site for exploration. If you love the outdoors, you’ll love Glentrool.
Sing, shout and write it all about, as we may do, the campsite itself doesn’t actually require you to be an Everest-envying explorer. While the main attraction is inevitably the location, Glentrool is still a place that’s worthy of its own praise. The camping pitches are spacious and flat – surprising given the it’s at the foot of the park’s highest mountain – and facilities are clean, modern and well-kept. There is a small onsite shop selling camping essentials and outside a small playground can exhaust the kids if the days activities haven’t already done so.
While the site does have static caravans and a cluster of hard-standings for caravanning types, it’s not at the cost of that natural, forest feel. Trees fill the campsite edges, with one or two seeming to have escaped the crowd and standing solo at various points around the field, while a lily pond in the tent camping area only adds to the calm feel of it all. Shetland ponies gnaw at grass through the fenced edge on one side of the site and exude a friendliness they surely get from their owners – Jen and Fran, who run the site, are two of the friendliest people you’re ever likely to meet.
As with all good campsites, Glentrool also comes with a good local pub – an essential that’s written in to camping folk lore. It’s a five or ten minute stroll down the road to The House O’Hill, the perfect spot for a refresher when you’ve returned from whatever expedition it was you chose. Walking the Southern Upland Way? Mountain biking the 7Slades trails? Climbing Mount Merrick? Or species spotting at RSPB Wood of Cree? Perhaps the expedition is simply to the pub itself – either way, we reckon Glentrool are right to describe themselves as the ideal base camp.
