£100 for a dorm bed in Inverness - the days of just turning up on the day in the hope for a bed are over

There are options if you were to book in advance for around the £35 mark for a dorm bed, but on the day? No chance. At least in my experience.

When I arrived in the city, I contemplated getting a bed after camping in the Cairngorms and along the A9 to Inverness for several days in a row. But looking up hostels on the day, I was met with prices around the £100 mark for a bunkbed. In one hostel, a standard twin room was £382 for one night.

The city’s Holiday Inn Express was £265 a night when booking several days in advance. Other cheaper options were one or two residents offering a single bed in their house for £80 a night.

I know the standard rate for a cheap hotel room in general is about £70 in Scotland, but if you’re a hiker or cyclist visiting the Highlands, a place where many fall in love with being in the outdoors, and rely on hostel-like accommodation every now and then when in urban areas, Inverness isn’t hugely welcoming on the accommodation front.

One fellow hiker who flew to Inverness to spend a month hiking in the Highlands told me he sought advice from a Facebook group called Scotland Travel Tips before his trip. He said members generally advised to book hostels in Inverness about a year in advance.

He told me all the cheap options for accommodation sell out months before the high season. I felt a little stupid being advised about the logistics of travelling in my own country by someone from abroad.

It’s understandable businesses want to make the most of the high season, there’s no denying that. But it makes the city far less inviting to hikers or cyclists who, according to many residents in the city who I spoke with, are less irritating than the swarms of campervans blocking the roads.

And it’s not only Inverness where finding cheap accommodation is an issue. In other popular destinations over holiday periods, for example the East Neuk, in Fife, it’s near-impossible to find not only a cheap room, but a room at all. Having run into this several times over the last few months given I often don’t know where I am spending each night, it’s made me realise the old-fashioned way of travelling from inn to inn while on the road without advanced booking is truly a thing of the past. Most places nowadays you need to plan at least a few days ahead.

I can probably count the number of places on one hand where I have been able to turn up at the door fairly late in the evening and get a cheap room on the spot, including the Cutty Sark in Eyemouth and Eglinton House in Ayr, both of which cost me between £20 and £40 for a single bed.

There are still hopes the Viewhill House, a former youth hostel in Inverness, will be restored.

The building, despite being a ruin in the heart of the city following a devastating fire about two decades ago, holds a history of happy memories for former guests who described the venue as “a hive of activity in the summertime” for cyclists and those hitchhiking “from all over the world” at a decent price.