A Not So Glamorous Trip To Edinburgh

Budget travel is a great thing but there are times when perhaps the trip didn't turn out quite like you hoped it would and my trip to Edinburgh last week was definitely one of those trips. We were flying to Dubrovnik from Edinburgh Airport and as our local airport is very expensive, we're used to long car journeys and like usual, we thought we'd make a day of it. We'd have the day before in Edinburgh itself, stay over in the city and drive to the airport the next morning to catch our flight. Alas, things never run as smoothly as that do they?!

When we booked our flights earlier in the year, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival didn't even cross our minds but of course you know what that meant when it came to looking for hotels; yup it was insanely expensive. We just could not justify the amount some of the hotels we looked at were charging, especially considering we'd be leaving at 4am the following morning so we explored our options and what did we find? A glamping village! We had been glamping to Whitby earlier this year (read my glamping blog post if you missed it!) and we absolutely loved it so we thought the same about this one. We booked what we thought was a little cute glamorous tent, complete with blankets, beds and fairy lights and I couldn't wait to get settled in as I love anything like that. After spending the day in Edinburgh, we headed to the campsite and we soon discovered we weren't getting quite what we'd thought.

I saw the pointed silhouettes of the tents with the fairy lights and I couldn't control my excitement - they look super cool and just like what you see on those Tumblr-esque images! However, when we checked in we were shown to what I can describe as a mini gazebo with doors as the glamping tents were closed for the end of summer and although these little "pods" were kinda cute after I got over the initial disappointment, it turns out that this was not one of our best ideas to date!

We unloaded our sleeping bags, got into the pod and oh em gee was it small but that wasn't what bothered me; it was absolutely bloody freezing. I don't know what else I expected being quite honest as we were sleeping in the middle of a field in Scotland for goodness sake but I expected to feel a little bit less like I was just exposed to the elements! I discovered that the pod actually had a rather large gap between the canvas and the metal frame right next to where my head would be so the wind was whistling through, bringing the icy chill with it but there was one thing on my mind - spiders would undoubtedly be crawling all over me as I slept and I'd be lucky to make it through the night alive. After having a lil bit of a "omg I'm going to wake up with a spider on my face" fit, we settled down wrapped in a thousand layers of sleeping bag with Netflix but of course what happened next? I needed the loo and Karl refused to come with me so I tredged through the field to the portaloo and tried to find my way back to our pod.

I say tried because I failed. The pods were in rows and because it was night time and they didn't have lights, they all looked exactly the freaking same! I walked up and down each row, trying to spot which one was ours without any luck and eventually I saw a light which I assumed was Karl's torch. In fact, it was an old lady laid in her sleeping bag reading a book. Mortified I almost sprinted away, shouted "KARL!" and finally he came out from our pod laughing, saying he'd seen me walk past lost three times!

Although we froze to death during the night and I probably had spiders on my face, it's these kind of moments that make memories. The moments you can laugh about later on and that really make a trip into a story. No one wants one of those trips where everything goes by a script and nothing entertaining happens do they?! Would I glamp in Edinburgh again? Of course! But next time, I'll make sure I am in one of the cute little tents and not in something colder than a tent itself! Maybe we'll save these cute little pods for warmer locations!?

Amy x