When you take it at face value, this site should be everything that Hipcamp is not: a council-owned site; run by the Caravan Club, with wardens in mint-green uniforms; and rules everywhere.
Now it’s true that at the height of summer it can seem like Caravan City with room for only a few tents jammed up against the dunes. But therein lies the secret. The site is slap-bang next to the sand dunes of a huge sweeping bay. Long stalks of dune grass practically reach over a small wooden fence to touch your tent.
The restless waves of the Pentland Firth attract surfers from far and wide. But Dunnet Bay is one of the north coast’s trump cards. With a mile or more of white sand stretching like a crescent moon to the cliffs of Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of mainland Britain, it’s a spectacular setting. With a bit of sunshine, a few tinnies of beer and the odd shout of ‘Ripper, mate!’ and you could swear you were on Bondi Beach in Australia. Well, almost.
For those with a head for heights, there’s a road roaming for five miles over bleak and brown scrubland up towards the cliff-top at Dunnet Head. Up there is the lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather with views over Gills Bay and across the channel between the headland and Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. On a clear day, you can see the breadth of Scotland from up here – from Cape Wrath in the east to John o’Groats in the west – and it’s worth putting up with a few too many caravans at the campsite for that alone.
