Scotland’s scenic north coast 500: a drive to remember—and a lesson in planning
The beautiful North Coast 500 route offers visitors the full variety of the Scottish Highlands — just be prepared...
I don’t often tell this story, because it reflects so badly on me. But if you’ve been inspired by the sighingly handsome scenery on show in Britain’s Most Beautiful Road, which comes to a close this week on Channel 4, there’s something you need to know before you take the route on yourself.
Sure, the North Coast 500 that winds round the very top of Scotland in a 516-mile loop is gorgeous (northcoast500.com). But beware the petrol stations – or, rather, the lack of them – and their charming if unhelpful tendency to close on Sundays. Because, believe me, there is little more embarrassing than having to call out the AA after your (rented) red convertible BMW has run out of petrol.
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When not being laughed at for it, I’m very grateful for the car’s electric roof: the weather, as I set off up the A9 from Inverness, is straight out of the I-Spy Book of Scotland, alternating Bible-black clouds and McDonald’s-yellow sunshine. With the road running almost audibly close to the sea, I pass through silent villages that once bustled, thanks to the herring industry, and cut inland to see the two Grey Cairns of Camster.
Image: The Castle of Mey, loved by the Queen's mother
From the road, these 5,000-year-old burial chambers look like cottage-sized piles of stones, but closer up the bleak emptiness starts to work its magic. I am on edge before I open the gate that lets you in, and my spine tingles furiously as I stand in the wind-howling gloom of the central chamber. I try to blame it on the back-breaking crouch-crawl through the waist-high entrance passage, but I can’t even convince myself.
Thirty minutes and a couple of epochs away is John o’ Groats: possibly the least haunting place I’ve ever been. A car park, a gift shop and a man charging £10 to take your picture next to a signpost – and “all this” for what is actually only the fourth most northerly point on the UK mainland. Round the corner, however, and a brilliant, blustery 40-minute walk away, are the Stacks of Duncansby. Here, the jealous seas chip away at the fortress-like cliffs of Britain, and the Stacks themselves – twin towers of ancient sandstone – stand like Coldstream Guards.
I sit watching seals’ heads shimmer in the sunshine for a while, then drive west. The car purrs haughtily past the Castle of Mey (the late Queen Mother’s fantasia of a Highland castle; castleofmey.org.uk), and the distinctive dome of Dounreay nuclear power station (designed as a sphere so it would implode rather than explode). I pull up for the night between the Land Rovers at Forss House Hotel, a 19th-century mini-mansion, where I have the best scallops of my life, from just over the Pentland Firth in Orkney (forsshousehotel.co.uk).
Next morning, the hotel organises fly fishing (it’s that kind of place). I catch nothing, but standing up to your knees in a loch with the curlews calling to you out of a vast blue sky is a wonderful way to feel like you’re living the scenery rather than just looking at it.
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I push on out of Caithness and into Sutherland, which “boasts” the lowest population density in Europe – and which, inevitably, is where I run out of petrol. But, refuelled and now a little humbler as I overtake the tractors, I reap the benefits of the remoteness, too: empty roads, silent sea-lochs and possibly the most perfect beach in the world. Not even meriting a name on my OS map (but next to an outcrop called Tràigh Allt Chailgeag), there is a wide, gentle slope of cotton-wool-soft sand shelving into dramatic breakers, with gorgeous little streams, crags for climbing frames – and nobody else there but the bunny rabbits.
It turns out there are several just like it, and in Durness, a couple of kilometres west, is a sign that says “Sandy beach” that points in three directions. I overnight there, at Mackay’s Rooms, a gorgeous little deluxe B&B (visitdurness.com/ mackays-collection/the-rooms).
Next morning, I make the one-mile walk to Smoo – it’s a sea-cave bigger than half the hamlets I’ve driven through over the weekend – and then I start the long drive south back to Inverness. I’ve planned my trip pretty badly, it turns out because it’s this western coast that’s the most spectacular, and now I’m rushing it.
The drive should take about three hours, and I’ve got seven – but four hours for dawdling and stopping feels like a dash when you’re driving down one of the world’s most spectacular seaboards. The road flirts with a hundred lochs and bays and inlets, and crosses just as many rivers and streams and burns. Snowcapped mountains loom, waterfalls rumble, sheep graze, ghosts haunt ruined castles, minke whales navigate the sea-lochs and the road winds on, infinitely inviting.
The car’s “fuel low” light comes on once more, but I ignore it. If I run out again, I realise, I’ll have to stay another night.
