This was a tour within a tour, as we started from Clochan in the county of Moray, north of Aberdeen, having driven up in Big Ted to stay with our friends Tony and Nicky in March, returning to England for August and then back up again in September.
After lots of DIY work, helping them on their huge steading (barn) conversion into a home (see previous blog entries from March to October 2020), we decided a trip away was in order as there was a 'weather window' of settled weather for a few days.
We've heard a lot about the NC500 road trip around the very north of Scotland, from remote sandy beaches and bays, ancient ashwood forests, Britain's highest waterfall, awe inspiring viewpoints and charming fishing villages and harbours, but we'd also heard about its popularity and the crowds of people wanting to tick off what is reputedly one of the best road trips in Europe.
We decided November would be a good time to go, with most of the rest of the country in lockdown (except for the very north of Scotland, where we were) the crowds would have dispersed and with a few days settled weather forecast, we downloaded the NC500 app onto our phones, which includes maps and towns, beaches, wild places and magnificent viewpoints to see, along with stories of local history and folklore along with Celtic music to put us in the mood, we set off....
Here's a map of the route, taken from the NC500 app, it starts and ends at Inverness which as we were only an hour and a half's drive (except the sat nav announced the coast road was shut, so adding another half hour to our time) from there it made it very convenient:
The route uses existing roads, many of them single track and has been marketed as the NC500, NC for North Coast and 500 for the approximate distance in miles (assuming no deviations or side trips are made).
We left Tony and Nicky's on 3rd November 2020 with the intention of doing part of it at a slow pace, for as long as the weather holds. In the end we did only about half of it, the eastern coast and half the northern coast as far as Strathy Bay, taking 10 days, before returning. During our trip we saw very few other people or motorhomes, partly due to the time of year, but also because of lockdown restrictions in most of the UK preventing travel. We were fortunate in starting from Moray in that both Moray and The Highlands were in Scottish Covid Level 1, which meant travel was allowed as infection levels up here were low.
In the end we terminated the trip for several reasons: the settled weather had broken down a bit after the amazingly settled, calm, quite warm weather with blue skies that we started with, it was more gusty, some fog and quite cold, but still not much rain; we were feeling quite guilty that we were allowed to travel yet most of the world was locked down; there was plenty of work to be done at Tony and Nickys, they have the roof slater booked for December and there's still much work to be done before they are ready for him!
Here's a map of our where we went with markers showing the places we stayed at. Click on the markers and more information along with photos of each place pops up:
Below are links to the two blog entries we did during the trip.
But first, here's a short YouTube video of a section of the road trip towards Bonar Bridge, played at 8 times speed:
First blog post, Inverness to Dunbeath: https://brianandjackiecross.blogspot.com/2020/11/from-house-renovations-to-nc500-road.html
Second and last blog post: https://brianandjackiecross.blogspot.com/2020/11/scotlands-nc500-road-trip-part-2.html
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