Portsmouth to Fort William trip

There can always be incidents that lead to delays on any road,  but  having travelled pretty much every year since 1998 south (and north of course) over the border from Scotland to England, either via the M74 or the A1, we have rarely suffered a major delay.  

There was one occasion coming home when we were stopped on the M74 for around an hour due to an accident.......an SUV had hit a bridge support on the central reservation, we were glad of the caravan toilet!   

The roads are much less busy the further north you come, then of course approaching Glasgow, or Edinburgh, things become more busy due to local traffic.

I rather like the route from the south of Loch Lomond going via Arrochar and Inveraray to Oban and then north to Fort William.  Lovely scenery, and a decent road.

We tow an 8m twin axle and would not contemplate going all the way up Loch Lomond until the road has been fully improved,

The OP could use the Green Frog site at Moffat if he isn't a CCC member.  Which is only a small site but perfect for 1 night with an easy walk into Moffat quieter than Strathclyde to. We often stay there when we have had a late departure from home, then the next stop we like is Kingsbury Water park another CCC site or a nice quiet CL at the cricket club at Onnely. We stayed there this springtime when we had the caravan.

We have done west side, east side and even down the middle, the west IMHO is better.

Not a route I would choose I'm afraid, going via Edinburgh can be a nightmare, Glasgow route is much better and the road to the Killin sites isn't the best towing. 

We’ve taken a liking to the River Breamish site. Leaving there about 8:30 means hitting the by pass around 10 which so far has avoided any hold ups. I agree the road through Killin is narrow in places, particularly on the Dochart falls bridge, but we visited a couple of times towing our Bailey Unicorn Cadiz (not a small caravan) with no problems.

We went to the Killin site once, on our way home from somewhere, the roads in the area are not the best, and the local buses take no prisoners.  I do not expect the forestry lorries do either.

One  bus, travelling in the opposite direction, swiped our extended mirror with, presumably, its mirror and smashed the head.  At least it did not damage the caravan.    Fortunately we carry a spare mirror.

We would not return to the Killin site again,  having spent some time there and seen the local area, nice though it is.    It is close enough to home for a day trip.

The route into Killin from the east from Aberfeldy along Loch Tay, is certainly one I would now avoid. We once did it towing our a smaller Abbey, that we had when we started towing. In our case it was the number of tourist coaches, which just didn’t slow down. Even revisiting a couple of times with the MH we have always come in from the A85 which is only about 3 miles.

...."doing the trip and using club sites".....

Steve, that would mean the sites dictate the route....for many it's the other way round🤷🏻‍♂️...pick the route that serves you best and then check for sites/CLs etc that look ok and don't take you miles away from your route.

as mentioned above, it's already a mightily long way from Portsmouth....

Also, I certainly wouldn't be looking to pay top dollar for 'an overnighter'....

I don’t think we have any idea of what type of sites the OP wants to use, they are merely suggestions nothing more and are ones, minus Clumber Park, that we would use if traveling the same route. We would use them because we happen to like them and are OK with the price. There is certainly a CL a couple of miles from River Breamish that looked nice when we passed it on a walk. However, I will leave it to others more familiar with those sort of stops to make suggestions, as I can’t do it from personal experience.

We went along that road in 2019 from the Killin site on the way to the Forfar site and it is a difficult road. We were lucky in a way because for part of the route we were following a coach, albeit slowly! It's classified as a Red Road by the OS but unfortunately that gives no accurate indication of how wide a road is and even two motorhome sized vehicles passing in the opposite direction it is tight. I am inclined to slow down in such circumstances but many don't seem to want to? There probably is a case for splitting the designation of Red A roads into another category and creating new aide memoire standards so you have a pretty good idea what you can expect. This thread got me thinking that only as far back as 20 years we probably wouldn't have the advantage of being asked about routes and would have probably gone our own merry way regardless in perfect ignorance and nine out of ten times things would have been OK!

BTW, Kj, the road to the Killin site from the A85 is perfectly OK and quite short. The bridge over the falls is one way at a time but you have a pretty good view from either side.

David

There are long term roadworks on the A1 around the Wentbridge/ Pontefract area, which is not motorway, so slower anyway. Not sure how long they are expected to last, but think it’s into next year, so best to check. We got caught up in the Spring, added a significant load of time to our journey, so we have been using M1 to go North since then, as you join A1 just before A64.