NC500 in 3 days

[Jobbo]

Aka Jobbo’s World Tour of Scotland - (c) Mik. As will have been apparent from my posts over the last week, I’ve had a fantastic week meeting up with people and driving round the further flung parts of our isle. TL:DR version - Scotland, I was in you. And you were great.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Edinburgh (in the last 15 years) and Aberdeen (in 1996/97) but have only explored the west coast a couple of times and had never been north of Inverness. It had been a few years since I had seen Nefarious due in part to COVID and in part to him no longer doing the annual Formula Ford race at Silverstone. So my initial plan was simply to pop up to Edinburgh for a few days and catch up. But when I contacted Ascender and Mik too, and some family in Nairn, a vague plan formed to drive round the NC500 to join them together. My wife stayed at home to look after the animals - and probably because she’s a normal well adjusted human being who thinks it’s odd to drive the best part of 2000 miles to meet a few weirdos from the internet. So the overriding purpose of my trip was to see people, catch up and the journey would be a bonus. And an opportunity to double the mileage I’d covered in my MX5 since buying it last July.

You can never predict the weather for Scotland but you’d have got particularly long odds on it being sunny, dry and warm all week. While the S6 would have been a fine back-up if it had been inclement, it’s being serviced on 20 May and would be way over the mileage if I’d taken it. Fortunately I put the top down by the time I got to Edinburgh and only really had it up when parked until I got to Tebay services on my way home a week later. There was a brief shower while I was with Scott on Sunday so I tried putting the roof up and then down again while moving - works fine at 20mph but it’s a bit sudden at 40 The coast road to North Berwick is good fun, as was the cross country route back to the A1, though both a bit busy with traffic on a sunny Sunday. Including a convoy of a Stratos and 3 Integrales going the other way (no photo sadly).

So I had a nice relaxing long weekend with Nef then headed north - first to the Grampian Transport Museum, having heard it mentioned on Smith & Sniff a couple of weeks earlier. Definitely worth a visit, it has the old TG cars now and is very densely packed with vehicles, displays and info. It’s a bit of a trek to get to, being about 30 miles west of Aberdeen, but well worth the journey. The chaps who run it are not old men as you might expect with a motor museum and they are enthusiastic, very happy to chat and should be safe hands to keep it thriving for years to come. I followed Google Maps’ recommended route from the A90 so I turned off at North Water Bridge, went north to Fettercairn and picked up the B974 Old Military Road. Google Maps had a bit of a habit of directing me onto tiny roads later in the day but at this point its suggestions were spot on and the drive was absolutely amazing. Here’s the view from the Cairn o’the Mount viewpoint:



By the time I’d finished at the museum I was pondering a visit to Pennan (famous from Local Hero, and where I spent a lovely evening on 24 June 1997 in the pub watching the sun barely go down and then come back up an hour later in almost the same place on the north horizon). But with dinner booked for 6pm in Nairn I went straight there - still lovely roads, and this time avoiding the Google suggested route, I jumped off the A97 down the B9002 and picked up the A941 through Dufftown to Elgin. Nairn is a lovely seaside town and if you are ever in the area, do go to MNMs cafe (they have one in Elgin too) - the lorne and fried egg roll for breakfast was divine.



Well fed again (did I mention that the food was one of things I was most looking forward to?) I headed to a lay-by on the A9 overlooking the Cromarty Firth to meet up with Ascender. What a gent, and what a fantastic sight his Dakar was to have behind me for miles and miles across the most amazing terrain and roads up in Caithness. He had booked lunch in Lairg so we headed there avoiding the A9 and crossing some beautiful scenery along the B9176. The one viewpoint I regret not stopping for a photo was along here, looking out towards the Dornoch Firth bridge. So have a photo from the next viewpoint along which faces inland:



We had discussed heading towards Tongue from Lairg but decided to go a different way, since I was keen to visit John o’Groats (just to say I’d been). So we headed east out of Lairg, up the A9 a bit (plenty of traffic but some amazing scenery to make up for that) and then went up the A897 from Helmsdale to the north coast, about 40 miles of single track with passing places. That was my first proper single track A-road of the trip and it was great; plenty of passing places so not too difficult to pass what little other traffic came the other way. It was very scenic but I wasn’t going to keep stopping for photos - though when we got to the most vivid yellow gorse patch I did for the colour. A great road.



At the top we turned right towards Thurso and JoG. This might have been a great driving road in the past but there’s more traffic and average speed cameras so we enjoyed the few twisty bits and just made our way otherwise. The view out to the sea and the islands is stunning though; the landscape is much flatter here and between Thurso and JoG it feels quite other worldly. Despite not having any great desire to see JoG except to say I’d been, I rather fell in love with it.



Mike and I headed down to Wick - for him, to visit Tesco en route home; for me so that I didn’t just double back to my hotel at Bettyhill. Again the JoG to Wick road - now the A99 - was lovely and due to the time of day, maybe, wasn’t particularly busy. We said our goodbyes at Tesco and, almost immediately missing my Dakar companion, I unwittingly followed the nav directions rather than my intended route and ended up doing 4 miles down the single track B874 rather than the expected A882. That took me past the end of Loch Watten though, which was rather picturesque at least. Then up to Thurso and back the way we’d come, less traffic by this time and still possible to enjoy the road and overtake despite the average speed cameras. I carried on past the A897 turning we’d come from and the road became more interesting, almost like Iceland, so unexpectedly the last 14 miles of A836 were yet another amazing drive. And the view from the hotel as I arrived was rather lovely too:



I’ve had this much saved for a day so I’m going to post it and add part 2 when I have had the chance to type it.

[duncs500]

Amazing. Love Scotland, need to go back soon.

[mik]

You were incredibly fortunate with the weather

I can confirm that the best way to read this post is to have Google Maps * open on a second window/screen.

*other map services are available.

[DeskJockey]

Sounds lovely. We're summering in Oban this year, very much looking forward to seeing the west of Scotland again.

[Barry]

Lovely. I've got a few days penciled in for Fort William area in June, loose camp site booked for now. Taking the adv bikes, although I'm still looking for an NC MX5 to do the same with.

[Jobbo]

I can confirm that the best way to read this post is to have Google Maps * open on a second window/screen.

*other map services are available.

This may be helpful too - a map on the wall in the Gairloch Hotel which shows the whole of the NC500. So omits quite a lot of the roads in my first post, but hey...

I found Google Maps to be irritating for planning because if you zoom out far enough to see a decent area of Scotland, many of the roads disappear.

[John]

Looks great

John o' Groats is a place I want to visit one day, pretty much for the same reason.

[GG.]

I'm very jealous. Looks like a fantastic trip and as others have said - very fortunate with the lovely weather.

[Beany]

You certainly did get lucky with the weather. I can assure you it's not as appealing in the pissing rain and a howling gale of wind!

And you missed out passing by Thrumster, and the Old Smiddy Inn, where the developers paid us kids to go through the old derelict blacksmiths and get artifacts from it, to be used in the finished place. Which are apparently still up on the wall after a sandblast and paint.

Also the bus stop I canoodled with girls in.

[Jobbo]

So, part two. This is really where I started the NC500 proper since I didn't simply follow the coast up the A9 from Inverness - while Mike and I used a short section of that, our route meant I did more of the section up to the north either inland or backwards. I'm glad to have benefited from Mike's local knowledge and avoided the main traffic though. So the first day of my NC500 trip ended at the Bettyhill Hotel and I had the most fantastic Highland Chicken for dinner. It was so good that I enthused about it to a couple who were going in for dinner. I saw them next morning at breakfast and he said he would have bought me a pint if he'd found me when he finished because it was such a good recommendation. Breakfast was similarly fantastic and I would certainly stay there again - a lovely location, great food and lovely people.



So, day 2 of the NC500, heading anti-clockwise. I had intended to refuel in Thurso the previous evening but for some reason didn't bother - the car was showing 100 miles' range but the low fuel light came on by Durness so I refilled at the tiny unmanned filling station there. I'd been told you can find fuel every 20 miles or so; well I didn't see anywhere between Thurso and Durness so if you do the trip, don't try to eke out the last miles of range. I didn't have any other range anxiety, despite fuel economy being in the mid-low 30s mpg for the trip rather than the usual 40+mpg.

Before I reached Durness I encountered my own white van man - the only person other than Mike, Scott and Mik who was faster than me over the week - just as the first single track started. I pulled in at the very first passing place and he hooted his horn in thanks and pulled an inexorable lead until getting out of view. A Citroen Berlingo, clearly the van of choice for this region. I was enjoying the views though; I particularly loved Tongue and its stunning causeway.



There's a decent length of two lane road west of Tongue round to Loch Eriboll - the below picture shows the island with old lime kilns where Harry Dwyer camped overnight on his watery trip. Then there's a long, long stretch of single track to Durness and out the other side past Rhiconich.



Durness wasn't massively exciting; it did feel a long way from anywhere but there was still a good mobile signal pretty much all the way from Betthill - in fact, for much of the trip I had a good mobile signal in some very remote places. Unexpected. Smoo Cave is the tourist attraction at Durness; I stopped briefly, didn't go all the way down to it and realised that any attractions with signposts were likely to be somewhat Father Ted.



I was heading for the famous (Evo magazine cover photo location) Kyesku Bridge and I didn't stop until I reached Scourie, where the couple from Bettyhill Hotel said they were staying that night. It's a lovely little place and one I'd definitely plan to stop for a bit longer next time.

And here are a couple of photos from the beach at Scourie:





Since I didn't stop at Kylesku here's the ECOTY 2021 picture:



Thus far there had been no real choices of route to take. I had passed a couple of turnings since leaving Betthill, both signposted to Lairg. But just after the Kylesku Bridge there's a right turn to the loop to Drumbeg and Lochinver. That's a much slower, winding, narrower road with more tourists in camper vans - including one rather permanent looking encampment which is a bit larger and more ramshackle than the Google Streetview image from a couple of years ago: https://maps.app.goo.gl/k5fgHHoGzku1wQo78 and now has a handwritten sign saying 'Abusers will be eaten'. While I now wish I'd stopped and taken a photo, at the time I was happy not to This is not a driving road, though to be fair the other drivers were very quick to pull in and let me past. Drumbeg had some glorious views.



I was happy to arrive at Lochinver and consult the map, Harry Metcalfe style. On watching his recent Testarossa trip to the NC500 after getting home I realise he stopped for lunch at the Lochinver Larder; I didn't search for food, still being plenty full from breakfast.



From Lochinver you can take minor roads further through the Assynt peninsula down towards the Summer Isles. I didn't this time but would potentially do so on another visit and miss out the Drumbeg loop.

The other road out from Lochinver was 2 lane again and I enjoyed a very quick journey from there to Ullapool. This was slightly inland and where the more dramatic mountains really started looming over the road. Harry M mentioned potholes in his video; after Edinburgh's broken roads the surface seemed pretty OK to me but there were certainly a few to dodge. The MX5 was ideal for that, being narrow enough to move round within your own lane and with nice darty steering. It was less ideal over the many crests round Assynt because it was so low, I couldn't see over them very well - an advance toot of the horn was useful quite a few times. Some of the surfaces aren't broken but are rather rippled, which is when I think the electronics of my car intervened and gave it a weird glassy feeling on one rather high speed bend. I didn't generally leave the ground much on the trip, just a couple of times at somewhat lower speeds over little yumps.

Ullapool is a lovely town and I will definitely be going back with my wife. She spotted a couple of Jellycat stockists there and I had a fun time in the gift shop above Loch Broom hardware, being amused by the two ladies serving who were at each other like Donald Sinden and Windsor Davies in Never The Twain. The boot of the MX5 was filled to capacity with purchases.









And on to my final stop of the say, Gairloch. I had expected the trip to take slightly longer so arrived about 3.30pm at the hotel.



Gairloch was somewhere I wanted to stay because my uncle and aunt used to go up there every new year to stay with old university friends. I did call my aunt and she asked if it was full of coach tours; indeed it was, being a fairly big old place, and they catered more for that than the solo traveller. I managed to sit down for dinner, have two courses and depart my table within half an hour - service perfect for the coach trippers. It was a nice place, lovely big room but only a double bed (not even a king size) and the experience was much less personal than Bettyhill. Gairloch itself is very pleasant and was the one stopping point I considered going into the sea. But still didn't. The views from my room were stunning, across the loch to Skye and Lewis. I could also see my car from the window and kept seeing old people going to look at it. Unexpected.



Day 3 will follow when I've typed that.

[Mito Man]

Lovely trip. I shall bookmark this for when I'm next up there.

[Jobbo]

This third instalment will be Day 3 of my NC500 trip. But before I mention the roads and scenery, a bit about planning. I said right at the outset that this was a trip to see people and the NC500 was simply a way of linking them together, but with the weather being good and the roads being fairly quiet it had turned into a decent driving holiday. I wasn't sure when booking places to stay whether I'd been a little ambitious (recommendation is for no more than 100 miles a day - probably aimed at campers - while I'd gone for more like 200 miles between hotels). But my early arrival at Gairloch proved that wasn't the case, and it was obvious that if I left early I could have even clearer roads before the tourists woke up. Day 3 was further than Day 2 and I knew a lot of the roads would be busier - it was a Friday and it involved heading south through Fort William, surely the traffic jam capital of northern Scotland. Plus there was really only one obvious route south so everyone - coaches, trucks, weekenders - would be using it. So I was resigned to the journey today becoming a dull procession at some point. As I had breakfast at 7.25 and my car was blocked in by a coach loading suitcases, I got a bit nervous - so I packed my stuff in the car and was gone before 8.00am, beating the two coaches away from the hotel.

I didn't need to worry; it was quiet. I made excellent time down to Kinlochewe and then aimed for Torridon on another likely looking loop. I had seen a recommendation for the Pass of the Cattle - a dead-end road from Torridon to Diabaig - as being better than Applecross and much less busy so I resolved to do that. The road to Torridon was single track again but crossed some beautiful moorland; a delivery van, a Qashqai and I kept leapfrogging each other as we went along; I had no desire simply to stay ahead when the views were epic and had to be photographed:



Loch Torridon itself was very beautiful too - and clearly popular with tourists. There's a chap on PH who moved there, built a house and posts regular pictures of the loch so I had thought it would be very empty and peaceful but it was a bustling hotspot. Easily hidden in photos, mind:



The Pass of the Cattle gives an amazing vista back to the loch - worth it even if you didn't carry on to Diabaig:



But do carry on, as the road wends down the other side of the pass and alongside a small loch:



Oh, what is that just visible in the photo? Yes, a seaplane. Clearly the remote location makes this an easier way out than by road sometimes



Lower Diabaig itself is beautiful, a bay with a stone harbour wall you can walk out on. There's a restaurant there which the campers I chatted to recommended highly:



The only way back from Diabaig is the way you came, to Torridon. Where I slathered myself in sun cream having forgotten with my early departure from the hotel. And with that I headed south towards Lochcarron (very pretty, somewhere I would like to go back to) and finally started to see more traffic, including groups of sports cars going the other way. The roads were good but I began having to follow other vehicles between Strathcarron and Stromeferry, and by the time I got to the A87 this became the pattern for the day. I stopped at Eilean Donan castle (plenty of foreign tourists, really busy) - probably better photos from the west side but the sun was behind it sadly:



So I stopped and paid to park next to it and the photo would have been much better with the tide in



By pure luck, when I left Eilean Donan there was virtually no traffic around for about 10 miles so I had a lovely drive down the main A87 until well past Shiel Bridge. I found some faster traffic from there down past Loch Cluanie but was able to get past that because the road was open with longer straights and good visibility. And then caught up with a long queue of cars behind a coach which I followed all the way to Invergarry and Fort William. At Fort William the queue thinned and I ended up a few cars behing a slow HGV instead - great. NC500 hire camper vans all headed the other way towards Inverness. But I knew that I'd be the only one turning off down the secret lochside test road rather than continuing over Ballachulish Bridge. I said to Mik the following day that it's absolutely not a test of power; it's twisty, up and down with crests on blind bends and a real joy.

Is this incriminating?




I'd been over Ballachulish Bridge precisely once before - this time I went under it. I then headed for the Connel Bridge down the A828 which was a nice road, marred by following about a couple of dozen bikers who could clearly have gone a lot faster but who were impossible to overtake as a bunch strung out down the road. Once I'd crossed the Connel Bridge (I've now been over the three major bridges, Kylesku, Ballachulish and Connel precisely once each) I could have headed straight to my overnight stop in Inveraray but detoured to Oban, which I loved when passing through 6 years ago.





Oban is always busy, being a decent size town with ferries to many of the islands departing there. Looking at the map now, I should probably have headed south from Oban down to Lochgilphead (always sticks in the mind from reading Iain Banks' The Crow Road in the 90s and looking up the impossibly fascinating place names) but I headed north east out of Oban up the A85. I remembered the A819 over the hills to Inveraray being a lovely road when I drove it 6 years ago. It would have been, except for a Ford Ranger ahead of me (trying, but not so much on corners) and another massive group of bikers ahead of him. They stopped at one point, I assumed to let us past. We then got held up at a temporary traffic light within a mile, where half of them filtered past and got in the way for the second half of the road as well. Irritating, but I was nearly at my destination and this was the story of the day so I was pretty sanguine.





Inveraray was as pretty as I remembered from passing through 6 years before. Only on getting home did I realise Harry M stayed in Inveraray too. I booked a place right in the middle which looked like it served good breakfasts; it was good but not as good as at Bettyhill, nor as good as my takeaway fish supper the night before:



And with that my coastal tour was done, but I still had a visit to make before heading home. Leaving Inveraray on Saturday morning and driving alongside Loch Fyne was a total contrast to the frustration of traffic the previous day, and Primal Scream's Swastika Eyes came on the stereo which perfectly suited the tempo and location.



One more to come...

[mik]

Your first two pics there are lovely.

[Jobbo]

Final part - this will have a bit of a round up at the end.

First destination on my final morning was to see Mik Dundee (who it turns out is not Australian) - he's been a star over the years and we had never met in the flesh so it was a treat to see him. And his gorgeous Evora. By this time I had decided white wheels would suit the colour of my MX5; I'd seen it next to enough white at this point

After a wee blether Mik suggested we take Jayemm's usual Scottish road to a lunch destination. I knew I was on my homeward route and this fortuitiously took us relatively close to the M9 at Stirling for me to jump on and head home, avoiding the need to go through Glasgow to the M8 or M74. I had forgotten that this was the route I used to take to Aberdeen in the 90s; I never stopped at Stirling but could see the castle and Wallace Monument from quite a few miles away as I approached and remembered how fascinating and Scottish they looked from those journeys.



Mik is another absolute gent and I hope to be able to repay him by taking him to Harry's road in the Cotswolds at some point.

On the way up, I thought the wind noise round the MX5's hood was a bit more than I anticipated so I decided to leave it down to drive home. I did that as far as Tebay, where I stopped for fuel. Turns out it is quieter on the motorway with the roof up after all I had a pretty easy trip back, not getting stuck in any jams and did 336 miles in under 5 hours I think, averaging 42mpg. A sunny Saturday afternoon is clearly a good time to travel. I didn't even feel fried when I got back, testament to the MX5's usability.

So, did I bond with the car? Oh yes, very much so. Was it the best thing I could have taken? Pretty much; if it had been faster then I'd not have been able to exercise it any more except on the longer straights. I only hit the rev limiter once all trip (following Mik - clearly he was humouring me less than Scott and Mike). I only saw less than half a dozen MX5s of any generation after leaving Edinburgh; I saw more GT3/RS Porsche variants than that, and generally plenty of 911s of all types. The Scots are so much more accepting of someone wanting to drive faster than them, they let you past very willingly and you aren't a social pariah. I waved at loads of people; from thank yous for letting me past to just people smiling at me passing. What a lovely, lovely place.

If you're thinking of going, I'd suggest being pretty picky about where you stay. The hotels Harry M recommended are very expensive - think £350 or so a night when I was looking to book. I didn't need a posh place to rest my head for the night and chose mostly based on menus. A B&B might be a pain because they won't do dinner. And when you look at Google Maps there are loads of places available which just look like a spare room in someone' house for £200 a night; I avoided those. I think I did well at Bettyhill, did OK at Gairloch (the other guests were not as sociable) and would probably have stayed at a different place in Inveraray, purely because they didn't do dinner and didn't have their own parking.

Next time it'll be Ullapool and the Outer Hebrides with my wife I think. A quite different trip. I think I'll look back on this one forever, very very fondly. It's the best part of 25 years since I was reading the thread on the Snitz forums about their north west adventure so the spark do this trip has been there for a long, long time. Do it.

[mik]

In case anyone was wondering, the MX5 wrap is definitely a more vibrant blue than comes across in pics. Looks very factory - which is a good thing.

Was kinda surreal meeting Jobbo F2F after way more than 20 years of knowing each other online. Chatted like a pair of budgies over a cuppa / lunch, and we were also lucky with our little drive - surprisingly little traffic allowed all pedals to be properly squeezed.

[Jobbo]

I think I was a bit subdued with you too since it was the end of my trip. Looking forward to the next time we get together.

[Marv]

Enjoyed reading that Jobbo

Looks like you managed to drag out most of the forum Scottish clan. When I went up there on my motorbike, they made their excuses to not meet me

I loved the Outer Hebredes, each island has its own character. Cal Mac were a bit rigid and when I turned up at Oban to buy tickets. There was no sort of open fare, I had to book each crossing there and then. It was also full for cars, I only got on because I was on the bike.

This was just out of lockdown, so things may have changed, but worth looking into it you start planning a trip there!

[DeskJockey]

Excellent storytelling. I'm not sure our trip up will be quite so memorable as yours for the driving (the Galaxy will be loaded to the top of the roofbox, five up and with four bikes hanging off the back. And even without all that, it isn't sporty, obviously). But, we can take inspiration from some of the points you've stopped along the west coast.

[Jobbo]

I did think as I was up there that Foz and Gavin at least will probably feel left out, but I only had a week. I already compressed the NC500 into 3 days

[Jobbo]

For a bit of context, Triumph enthusiasts manage to do over 2000 miles in old cars, in 48 hours, every other year on the Round Britain Reliability Run (RBRR). That does include a bit of my route near JoG but they don't do the far north-west. Route here: https://ctrbrr.blogspot.com/p/the-route.html