This article first appeared in The Scots Magazine, June 2026: https://www.scotsmagazine.com/subscribe/

I trudged uphill on the forestry path in the dark, sweating under the weight of my rucksack, but enjoying the night breeze that was keeping the midges at bay.

After a day spent walking in Glen Nevis to Samuel’s Cave (which is said to have played a key role in the massacre of the MacSorlies of Glen Nevis by the Clan Chattan in the 16^th century), and swimming in the chilly river, I’d set off in the dwindling light around 8.30pm. My intention was to wild camp in the abandoned village of Tollie, hidden in the hills between the Glen and Blarmachfoldach.

As darkness fell, the moon emerged from behind the clouds, and I attached my headtorch, but left it switched off. The wide track was easy to follow in the moonlight, taking me over the hill, past the Iron Age vitrified fort, Dùn Deardail. When I arrived at the point where I estimated I had to enter the forest, I peered into the darkness beneath the trees and put my torch on. I felt daunted. This was testing my new ‘I’m not scared of the dark’ outlook. The spindly lower branches hung with pale lichen and reached towards me, as the beam from my headtorch bobbed and cast eerie shadows.

There is no path to the ruins, which are little more than rubble hidden beneath a thick carpet of moss, and the settlement isn’t marked on maps. It had been abandoned in the mid-19^th century, with local stories of an outbreak of illness, but not much in the way of official record. All I had to navigate with was a screenshot of a Google Maps location, from when my brother had taken me there a year earlier. Above me, the night sky was bright with stars, and tall pines creaked where they had fallen against one another during storms. Beneath my feet, dead branches cracked as I scrambled down a steep hill in the forest, my heavy rucksack threatening to pull me off balance.

I’d conquered several fears two years earlier when I’d started solo wild camping, seeking some mini adventures after almost three decades raising my children and working in offices. I liked the challenge that sleeping alone in the countryside gave me, and I’d mostly been able to rationalise my concerns … but my heart was pounding as I searched for the remote ruins in the dark. I had to give myself a stern reminder that I didn’t believe in ghosts.

I soldiered on until I came to a thin stream I remembered crossing with my brother. I compared my current location with my screenshot, realised I was close, then spotted the telltale moss-covered mound of a home abandoned 200 years earlier.

My nervousness had abated by this time, something I’d noticed on many of my night-time walks to camp in various locations in the Highlands. The first ten minutes of being alone in the dark could be nerve-wracking, but familiarity with the world at night quickly sets in. I had discovered a peacefulness and otherworldliness from walking in the dark that I had never experienced before.

Excited that I’d reached the village, I spent the next fifteen minutes exploring the eight or so distinct circles of rubble, some with the stones exposed, but mostly covered by undergrowth. A couple of the houses had tall trees growing in them – the Forestry Commission had planted the forest in the 1970s, with no regard for the remains of the village.  

I found a spot between two ‘buildings’ and set about erecting my tent. If I shone my headtorch upwards I could see the treetops swaying in the wind but on the forest floor the air was still, and alive with insects. I felt the remnants of the spiders’ webs I’d walked into clinging to my hair. To my relief, and surprise, there were no midges in the forest, but there were a great number of long black slugs slithering across the moss.

It was now close to midnight and I felt suddenly exhausted. I prefer to walk in the dark and pitch my tent late, and to be so tired that sleep is an inevitability. Insomnia when alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere is when your imagination really comes to life!

After taking a few stunning photos of my tent with soft light from the open door pooling onto the dark green forest floor, I chased a few spiders out of my tent, then got into my sleeping bag and went straight to sleep.

I woke a few times in the night to the sound of the wind high in the trees, but managed to quell thoughts of heavy branches falling on my tent, and get straight back to sleep.

Around 6am, the wind had died down and I woke to a heavy silence, surprised to not even hear birds. Perhaps this being a planted forest meant less natural diversity. After snuggling down in my sleeping bag for an hour or so, thinking about where I was, and the forgotten people who had lived in this very spot all those years ago, it was a joy to finally unzip my tent and peer out at the carpet of green surrounding me.

I spent an hour or so wandering about the ruins, remembering the story in a Glen Nevis history book that suggested the people who had lived there had produced dye for cloth and had traded with ships that docked at Fort William in the mid-1800s. It is said that the population of Tollie might have been decimated by an outbreak of illness, possibly cholera, but the Highland Clearances were also a possibility for its abandonment.

Before packing up my tent I cooked my signature camping breakfast of spicy eggs in a tomato and garlic sauce, which I’d learnt to cook when I lived in North Africa with my Tunisian husband. It made me wonder what the people of Tollie had eaten for their breakfast – certainly not chilli, garlic and tomato.

Spicy Tunisian style eggs for breakfast