The next stage of our adventures: McScotland and the NC500
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The Detail
Distance Travelled: 1720 miles in 26 days
Expenses: Fuel £502; LPG £15; Site Fees/Parking £119; Groceries £504; Laundry £38; Eating Out £120;
Stopovers: Castle Caerlaverock; layby on the A711; Wigtown; Ayr; Loch Lomond; Ben Nevis; Loch Ness; Tain; Golspie; Keiss; Castletown; The Wind Farm; Sherry Harbour; Durness; Kylesku; Layby on the A837; Falls of Shin; Knockan Crag; Ullapool; Kinlochewe; Skye; Portree; Clashwoods;
And we're off!
In October 2021 we were finally ready to start our motorhoming adventures.
Although we had been living in a caravan pitched on the beach at Blackpool Sands, and laterly in Lottie, our motorhome, we hadn’t actually gone any distance until our trip to McScotland. This was our first experience of actually travelling around in Lottie, and it was a much steeper learning curve than we imagined.
Leaving Devon early in October we meandered up the West coast of the UK. I talked about this part of our trip in a previous post – “The Journey Begins”.
Arriving in McScotland on the 8th of October we started making our way toward Inverness as it’s a great starting point for the NC500, whichever way around you wish to go. We decided to go anti-clockwise as we were fairly new to driving around in such a large vehicle and wanted to have a bit more time on the larger roads before tackling some of the narrower ones on the West coast.
On Route to the NC500
But I am getting ahead of myself. From arriving in McScotland at Gretna Green to starting the NC500 took about a week. The trip through McScotland to Inverness was a delight in itself. We had to detour slightly to visit a garage in Ayr to have an issue with the suspension looked at, but thats another story.
On route to Inverness we spent the night on the banks of Loch Lomond, at the foot of Ben Nevis and on the banks of Loch Ness. We watched the Harry Potter Train on “that viaduct”, foraged mushrooms in the woods, saw deer, waterfalls and some beautiful scenery.
What an introduction to McScotland! It seems there was something to see and do around every corner and we hadn’t even made it to the start point.
First day on the NC500
Finally, about 2 weeks after leaving Devon, we made it to Inverness and the starting point of the NC500. As I said earlier, we decided to travel anti-clockwise as the East Coast is the easiest part of the route to drive and as such is a much gentler introduction. We had also been told that the West Coast offers the most dramatic scenery, so we wanted to save that until towards the end of the route. Save the best ’til last if you will.
And we were off. First stop Struie Hill viewpoiont, overlooking the Firth of Chromarty. Absolutely stunning. Then on to Loch Fleet where we spent a happy couple of hours seal watching against a backdrop of more beautiful views. And that was just day one. What a start to the NC500.
Duncansby Head To Thurso
Continuing round the route over the next couple of days we took in Duncansby Head , the most North Easterly point of the UK, John O Groats, because you have to, and to be honest it wasn’t as commercialised as I feared. On to Dunnet Head, the most Northerly point of the UK, then Thurso where we watched seals in the harbour and found a tremendous butchers and equally good fishmongers.
Windy Harbourside Stopover
Then on the fourth day I thought it would be rather nice to stop the night on a remote harbourside at Skerray Harbour
We made our way there via Puffin Cove, which was delightful, if somewhat of a tricky walk to get so. Sadly no puffins there at that time of year though.
The drive to the harbour was a bit challenging, with some very narrow roads, no wider than Lottie. It is probably worth mentioning that to get to the harbour we had to detour off the main NC500 route, hence the narrow roads. We did that kind of thing on a regular basis! Once there it was an idyllic spot, and the early evening lulled us into a false sense of security about what was coming. We parked right on the waters edge, with the waves lapping not 10 feet from Lottie at high tide. We had our supper and watched fishermen tending their boats, checking they were properly secure. This should have been a bit of a clue, but we were oblivious.
As the evening wore on the wind started to get up until eventually, after we had gone to bed, the wind was so strong that Lottie was being rocked all over the place. We tried moving to find a more sheltered spot, but there just wasn’t any cover. There was one other motorhome there and they were having similar problems.
Eventually we had to give up and move inland to a more sheltered location. Needless to say, we took much more notice of the forecast when choosing our parking location for the evening after that.
Oldshoremore Beach to Kylescu
Continuing on we had what was claimed to be “the best hot chocolate in the world” at Durness (left rather underwhelmed) then detoured to Oldshoremore beach via some very narrow roads once again. An absolutely gorgeous beach where we encountered some rather friendly cattle roaming free.
By now we were finding some very narrow roads, which had some very steep inclines too. Interesting when meeting oncoming traffic sometimes. Just glad we were travelling at a quiet time of year. I can only imagine it would be challenging during the main season.
Onwards to Kylescu where Zeus and I had a close encounter with a young stag whilst I was taking him on his bedtime walk. Fortunately Zeus kept his cool and didn’t start barking, and the Stag just stood there and watched us closely, clearly not worried about us.
The Bone Caves
Then came a very memorable walk to the bone caves – so called because they had been found to hold ancient bones of polar bears, lynx, wolves, reindeer and humans and had clearly been used for shelter for many hundreds of years. Let’s just say that Carol and I are not fond of heights, steep slopes coupled with rain and strong winds scared the daylights out of us. Once again a learning experience – look before you leap!
Continuing round we drove through some absolutely stunning scenery eventually coming to Loch Ewe. Between 1941 and 1945, Loch Ewe was the main strategic military base for the Arctic convoys. As a deep sea loch with direct access to the north Atlantic Ocean, it was a perfect location. At times up to ninety-five Merchant Navy and Royal Navy ships anchored in the loch.
The Cattle Pass
Next up was arguably the most challenging part of the drive round the NC500. The Bealach-na-Bà, or cattle pass. It has been described as remote, scary, challenging, breath-taking and never to be forgotten. According to the official map the pass should only be attempted by competent drivers and shouldn’t be attempted in any vehicle over 18 ft long – Lottie is 22 ft! So I start to worry. I have every confidence in my own ability – or am I being overconfident? Am I putting myself and others at risk?
I start reading more about it, watch videos on YouTube, talk to friends who have driven it. Plenty of people do it in similar sized vehicles don’t they? And we have already driven on some very hairy roads! I make up my mind that we will do it – but that doesn’t stop me having a sleepless night the night before!
In the event it wasn’t as scary as I had built myself up to believe. We just took thing real slow all the way round, allowing plenty of time to find passing places to let oncoming traffic through. For the actual descent down the pass itself we were able to stop at the top where we had a view all the way through the pass. We waited until it was all clear so we didn’t meet anything coming the other way and had a smooth drive down. Pretty much needless worrying.
Back to Inverness
From here we made our way down to Skye where we spent a couple of days, taking in some of the amazing sights that it has to offer such as the fairy glen and coral beach. I have heard some people describe Skye as representing all of what McScotland has to offer but in a small island. For us, we thought it was a little commercialised for our taste, preferring the wild remoteness of the Highlands.
Then the drive back across the middle of McScotland to complete the circuit.
I have described here some of the highlights from our trip. But there is so much I haven’t included. We love the freedom of being able to go where we please, without any sort of itinerary or timescale.We have seen some truly amazing sites, met some lovely people and visited places we never even knew existed.
We fell in love with McScotland, and perhaps more importantly, we became hooked on motorhoming. Next stop East Coast 250.
I haven’t gone into great detail about anything in particular in this post, so if you would like me to expand on anything please leave a comment and I will endeavor to write another separate post on the topic.
Happy Motorhoming.
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