Three families, a convoy of Defenders, and one night on the roof

I spend my professional life arranging comfortable trips for other people, which is worth knowing before I tell you that I chose to spend a night of my own holiday in a tent bolted to the roof of a Land Rover. The usual disclosure, this time in reverse: we paid for every bit of this trip ourselves. No hosting, no freebies, which means what follows is a customer's verdict, not a guest's.

The company behind it is Nomadic Scotland, and it's worth being clear about how much of the trip was theirs, because "car hire" undersells it considerably. They curated the route, booked the hotels and the campsite, made our dinner reservations. Pretty much everything was covered before we'd got anywhere near Scotland. And before we left their base in Perth, they walked us through all the kit with a genuinely thorough handover, which mattered more than we realised it would once we were putting tents up in the Highlands rather than reading instructions in the rain. From there we were a convoy: three families, one in the new Defender, two of us ours included in the old-style classics.

Let me start with what the trip is really about, because it isn't particularly the camping. It's the driving. We averaged around two hours a day behind the wheel, which turns out to be exactly right, and some of those hours are the reason you do this. The best of them was a single-track pass that took us up and over the mountains: forty-five minutes of properly hair-raising driving, significant drops off the side, squeals on the tighter corners, and the occasional standoff with a car coming the other way. It was also, by some distance, one of the most memorable stretches of the whole trip. That's the deal with a classic Defender, nothing about it is smooth, quiet or especially comfortable, and on a road like that you understand why people love them. It's the open-road thing; you really do feel like you're in an episode of Top Gear. It's genuinely exhilarating.

The views held up their end too. The run over to Skye, out by ferry, across the island, and back to the mainland by bridge, produced the scenery that stops a convoy: lochs, glens, and the kind of landscape photographs keep underselling.

The evenings were where the trip showed its range. Most nights meant genuinely lovely hotels, all booked for us, dinner reservations and all, so the days ended without a single piece of admin. One evening in particular, the whole group around one big table in a really beautiful dining room, was a special experience in its own right. There's something about a day spent on the road doing remarkable things and then coming together in the evening, everyone talking over everyone else about the same pass and the same views, that three families almost never manage to engineer at home. The trip creates those dinners; it's part of what you're paying for.

And then there was the night we all climbed the ladders. Two things are true about it, and a fair review gives you both. First: the camp evening itself was magic for everyone. We cooked out under the awnings steaks over the fire, sausages, pasta for the kids, and that rustic, thrown-together meal was one of the best we had all trip. Second: the sleeping is where the group split, honestly and without a wrong answer. The other two families genuinely enjoyed their night on the roof — more comfortable than they'd expected, better than they'd expected, and they'd do it again tomorrow. Ours had a hot, sweaty, long night that the rain did nothing to improve, and we came down the ladder in the morning reaffirming what we already knew: we are not the hardy campers in this story. A rooftop tent is a real experience for hardy souls, and plenty of people, including two-thirds of our own convoy, will love it. It just isn't us, and if your travelling life sits firmly at the five-star end, it's worth knowing which kind of camper you are before the ladder goes up.

So, the verdict. We'd do this trip again, and we've talked about exactly that. With one adjustment for our family: keep the Defenders, keep the driving, absolutely keep the cook-out, and let the hardier families take the roof while we find a bed nearby. The formula's genius is the contrast between adventure by day and comfort by night, and the beauty of the way Nomadic set it up is that you can tune that dial family by family. Three days was enough to know we'd done something special; albeit with a few comfort oriented amends for our crew next time!