‘GETTING away from it all by taking it all with you,” intoned my father, staring out of the window at a particularly enormous campervan, manoeuvring into the area we have reserved for parking in a vain attempt to prevent people careering all over our machair ground in their home from home.

It was one of the really big ones. Not quite as ridiculous as whatever those oversized army-esque vans are, but a long wheelbase, high top conversion job with a bristling roof rack. The mind boggles at the potential weight of the thing.

These monster mid-life-crisis-mobiles with off-road tyres and in some cases, chimney flues (because nothing says relaxing like a live flame over the fuel tank) give me the fear.

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At least with the traditional white box you know it has been built by a ­company that understands the concept of kerb weight. Their furnishings are lightweight, and pleasingly, the tyres and chassis are very unsuited to rough terrain. That ­definitely works to the advantage of those of us who own land.

The wee Volkswagen transporters beloved of our windsurfers aren’t too bad either. The main issue with them is that there isn’t space for their owners to stand up inside to change, so when the wind is favourable for being towed by a kite whilst clinging to a death-board, we regularly drive past rafts of bare ­backsides ­towelling themselves off. With few ­on-board amenities, they tend to head for campsites. I’ve got little issue with them. Apart from their glowing cheeks – which can be a bit much before breakfast.

Frustration with motorhomes has been building in recent times, ­accelerated by the post-Covid camping frenzy. The Isle of Skye, the poor souls on the NC500, and much of the rest of the Highlands have been variously in uproar over the last few months. Headlines ­shouting ­“freeloaders”, “block them in” and “tax them” are a regular occurrence in my feed.

Last week, Simon Calder proposed ­taxing motorhomes arriving in the Outer Hebrides, and Highland Council have ­belatedly realised that there are too many vans, and not enough facilities. They have created a voluntary scheme whereby for £40 a van can have a bumper sticker and use any of 12 car parks with free showers at council leisure centres. As you can ­imagine, this has gone down badly with people who run campsites and adhere to a multitude of rules including a six ­metre distance between vans to avoid fire spread.

In Skye, they are talking about ­automatic number plate recognition on the bridge as a means of clocking all the vans arriving. Tolls might be a dirty word, but something has to give.

There are good campervan drivers. Absolutely there are. I know some. They follow the rules about waste, they use designated sites, they buy local, eat out, and use passing places as they should be used. It’s not all motorhome drivers. That much should be obvious to even the most obtuse. I fully expect that disclaimer will do nothing for my postbag, but I can try.

Sadly, there are two problems that eclipse the “I’m one of the good ones” ­argument.

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Firstly, there are a lot of newbies who have taken up the sport recently. Many think that four oversized tyres and a sticker saying “not all who wander are lost” are a passport to going wherever they want. Inexperience, ignorance and entitlement are a heady mix.

And secondly, it’s the sheer volume. Yes, you pay a lot for a van, and you pay for petrol. You might even shop ­local.

But your van is heavy and you take up space. Your turning circle is akin to that of the MV Clansman, you take up 1.5 parking spaces and you are not paying for ­accommodation. You are not paying the council tax for the waste in the area, you are not paying for the road maintenance – and neither are our councils. It’s often left to the local communities to try and control, or police or plead.

I’ve heard from people who are ­offended at the idea of their van being charged or taxed – that it makes them feel unwelcome. Surely, if we move beyond the initial hurt feelings because “I’m one of the good ones”, it’s possible to see that even the good ones, multiplied by ­thousands, cause an infrastructure problem, a waste problem, and in the case of the ones who can’t reverse or find the accelerator or ­indeed a mirror, an image problem.

In Tiree, we’ve done pretty well over the years. People booking the boat were told in a wee pop-up that they were ­expected to book their motorhome on to a croft camping site. The crofter gets a cut of the modest fee. It generally works really well. Residents know that campervans pay their way, that the crofter benefits, and that fragile ground is protected as well as possible.

This year was threatening to undo much of that good work. And it was thanks to a small change in the CalMac booking ­system. The much heralded ­“system” didn’t build in the pre-existing pop-up for Tiree. Nor, I believe, for Colonsay, where the roads and motorhomes rarely see eye to eye.

We flagged it early on. We flagged it all winter. We flagged it in the spring. We were told that our concerns had been heard and that it was “in the backlog”. I have spent enough time in tech to know exactly what that means. It’s code for “we’ve consigned it to a black hole from which it is unlikely to emerge”.

The loss of that pop-up is a small thing with big consequences. It means that people may arrive not knowing that they should book a site. It means that they park wherever they damn well please. It means that they don’t get the crucial information pack about being a responsible driver and where the waste disposal is. It means that their expectations are not set before they arrive, and all of that sets up an increased risk of conflict with both crofters and our long-suffering Ranger.

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So, with Tiree’s fragile ecosystem ­firmly stuck in the CalMac “backlog”, and this column at the draft stage, I reached out to CalMac to have one last go at trying to find some solutions.

And to give them their due, progress was suddenly made. They have made real efforts to highlight the issue at multiple points in the customer journey through the website, including SMS updates, the pre-booking page and FAQs.

Customer contact points are primed to remind people about booking, and whilst a formula that says “if destination equals Tiree AND vehicle equals motorhome THEN pop up this notice”, would ­appear to be entirely beyond the ability of a multi-million pound booking system, it sounds like an alternative solution is in the works that may benefit more than just Tiree. Fair play!

I’m left, though, with a generalised frustration about how too often, useful change only happens when crisis point is reached. Motorhome owners are feeling attacked because of exactly that – those who have been shouting into the void for years have collectively reached the end of their tethers and some of the powers that be have suddenly heard the racket.

The perfect solution doesn’t always exist, but maybe if drivers stopped ­complaining about being asked to pay for their presence and started asking how such a large group of people who want to enjoy beautiful places could work ­together to support those places more, we might start to make progress.

And in the case of Tiree, a good place to start would be to absorb the shiny new advice on the CalMac website.