In the middle of the long hot summer of 1976, my friend Lucy and I decided on a camping holiday to Inverness in Scotland. 

I borrowed a tent and some camping equipment from a friend, and we set off on a Friday afternoon after work. 

It was too late to find a campsite by the time we arrived. We slept in the car. In the morning we found a campsite alongside Loch Ness. It was basic, though there were showers and toilet blocks. There was no shop or club house or any social amenities.

The next day we walked alongside Loch Ness to a pub. It turned out to be much further than we had thought and we were both exhausted when we arrived. By the time we left we had consumed a few pints of beer and neither of us fancied the walk back. The barman came to our rescue. He kindly gave us a lift back to the campsite.

The next day we went back to the pub to thank the barman for helping us. This time we had taken our own car. As we sat enjoying our drinks we were approached by two young people who asked if they could sit at our table. We chatted away and discovered they were both hitchhiking their way around the UK and Europe. One was a short, bespectacled young man from Japan. He had been sent by his father ‘to see the world’ before settling down to work for the family business. The other was an American girl from California, just out of High School. She was very tall, bronzed, athletic; the all American girl. They had met in the Lake District and decided to travel together. We made an unusual foursome.

We discovered our Japanese friend, whose name I can’t remember was heading for Newcastle where he had relatives. The girl, and I don’t remember her name either, was hoping to go to the Whitby Folk Festival on the Yorkshire coast.

Having seen our car keys on the table they asked if we could give them a lift into Inverness. Lucy and I had previously agreed we would not pick up hitch-hikers, so made some excuse about going in the other direction.

We felt a bit mean as we had been grateful for a lift the day before. When the pub closed, they left and Lucy and I agreed that as we had enjoyed their company, we could give them a lift. We found them waiting on the road so we said we would take them.

We dropped them off on the road south out of Inverness. As we drove away I said to Lucy that we would be heading south at the end of the week, and we could have taken them with us. Lucy agreed and so we went back to where we had left them. As we arrived they were just loading their rucksacks into the boot of a car. We told them of our plan, and they readily accepted. I explained to the driver of the car that had offered them a lift what was happening. He looked bewildered.

We took our new friends to our campsite. They were experts at camping. They soon had us organised and took over the cooking. Lucy and I ate very well for the rest of the week. In exchange we took them around in the car visiting various places of interest. We also introduced them to ‘pints o’ heavy’, a local strong beer, and the subtleties of a Single Malt Whisky.

We left Inverness very early on Friday, as we wanted to show them something of Edinburgh. A quick stop in Grantown-On-Spey, to stock up on miniature malt whiskies to take home for our friends. We spent the afternoon sightseeing in Edinburgh and then set off to find a local campsite. They were all full. Somebody told us people were camping on the grass by the beach at the Firth of Forth on the outskirts of Edinburgh. We found the place and just left the car, and went looking for some food and a drink. We were not in the city centre, the tourist part of Edinburgh, but on a housing estate in the suburbs.  We found a real ’local’ pub.  Everybody in the pub would have known everyone else.  Being Friday night the pub was full,  Then we walked into the Lounge Bar, an assortment of four slightly eccentric oddballs, in a range of bizarre outfits. Everything stopped; you could have heard a pin drop as everyone just turned and stared. You could see what they were thinking.  Who on earth were these ……. I just walked up to the bar and ordered ‘4 pints of heavy’, as if we were locals  ourselves, and then just as suddenly the noise resumed and nobody paid us any attention.

It was late when we left the pub, and slightly the worse for drink, and when we got back to the car nobody could put up a tent. We sat in the car and drank the Malt Whisky intended for home. Finally, the four of us just laid on the grass and pulled the tent over us.

Next day we headed home. It was very sad when we said goodbye to our Japanese friend in Newcastle. There were hugs and tears. Then we drove to Leeds. I had invited the girl to stay with my family for a few days. As well as seeing Leeds, she had time to do some washing and sort herself out for the next leg of her journey. . The last I saw of her she was trying to ‘thumb a lift’ to Whitby for the Folk Festival. I had a couple of postcards from her over the next few weeks. Lucy and I still talk about that holiday. How people can come into your life for just a few days and make an impression that stays with you forever.