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Can 3 friends survive for 24 hours on a deserted Scottish island?

31 July 2018

Some people dream of living purely off the land. But what happens when you try it for real?

Kate MacLeod and two of her friends visited a deserted Scottish island with nothing more than basic camping gear to see if they could survive 24 hours only using what they found.

“Food, water, shelter — we’re gonna do it ourselves.”

鈿� Scroll to the bottom for some advice about wild camping

Surviving On A Deserted Island In Scotland for 24 Hours!

Kate Macleod attempts to survive on a deserted island with a couple of her friends.

Their basic survival gear

Even though the group were attempting to live purely off what they found on the island, they did take some gear with them to ensure their safety.

Item Why they took it
Radio To contact the mainland in case of an emergency
First aid kit To take care of any minor medical issues that might have arisen
Sleeping bags To keep them warm overnight
Gas cooker and pan To cook the food they caught

Meal 1: seaweed and limpets

The group went out foraging and found plentiful supplies of both limpets and iron-rich seaweed. They cooked both using their pan and gas cooker.

One of the trio described the seaweed as “so salty” that she had to spit it out onto the grass. And the limpets were so “rubbery” as to be inedible — except by one of the group, for whom they were “not too bad”.

(From 2013) Landward’s Dougie Vipond meets a seaweed harvester

Gimme (adequate waterproof) shelter

The group managed to find discarded tarpaulin and planks of wood 鈥� suitable for cobbling together into a serviceable tent.

(From 2013) How to camp responsibly and minimise your impact on the environment

Loch Lomond: wild camping

How to camp responsibly and minimise impact to the environment.

Meal 2: freshly caught seafood

Breakfast the next morning was a much more paletable experience for the group.

They went fishing, successfully, and gutted their catch of the day before cooking it in the pan.

Having enjoyed that very much, they then chopped up one of their fish and placed it into a lobster catcher as bait. The tactic worked: they landed some delicious-looking crabs!

A local bids the trio farewell

The three survivalists’ lift back to the mainland arrived just in time to spare their recently-caught crustaceans from the pot — lucky crabs!

It was another water-dweller who saw the intrepid adventurers off in style, however. At the conclusion of their successfully-negotiated challenge, they managed to get some terrific pictures of this beautiful seal swimming past:-

360掳 swimming with seals

鈿犅犅燗dvice for wild camping

  • Don’t leave any litter behind; and don’t bury sanitary products
  • Take care when lighting fires or using gas; never cut firewood from trees
  • Keep groups small – one or two tents – and only stay for one night
  • Make your toilet at least 100ft from water; bury waste with a trowel
  • Take waterproof clothing, a map, compass and a whistle when in remote or high areas
  • Let someone know where you are going; mobile phones can be unreliable

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