July 11, 2016

It has been a while since we began our trip through the outskirts of the Highlands in Scotland last summer. Stay tuned for more Scotland posts as I try to make good on my resolution.

The majority of our trip throughout the Scottish Highlands was planned following a course called The North Coast 500. This is a fairly new campaign enticing visitors to explore the vast coastline surrounding northern Scotland. It consists of 500 miles of winding, often single lane, roads. It was advertised that some parts were dangerous and that travelers on this route should be aware of sheep and cyclists. This itinerary provided us much needed direction in planning. It sounded perfect.

The North Coast 500 route. We traveled west first.

North Coast 500 (NC500) has a fabulous website and app. Once downloaded, we could explore every accommodation, activity and even gas station along the route. Reasonably priced available accommodations pretty much decided where we would stop along the way. Everyone following this route starts in the UK's northernmost city, Inverness, which is regarded as the capital of the Highlands. From there, you can choose to head west or east. I think the rougher driving was on the western coast, so we started that direction.

We never made it to Loch Ness while we were staying in Inverness, so we started our trip with a small detour from the suggested NC500 plan. We stopped to visit Urqhart Castle located on Loch Ness. We had no problem passing up the extremely touristy museum dedicated to Nessy, the cute local name for the Loch Ness monster. We would much rather spend our morning exploring a castle. The typical Scottish weather - a bit overcast with a sprinkle of rain every now and again - was expected and only made the visit more appealing.

Our tour of the castle started with a short movie explaining some of the historical background of the area. After that, we were free to walk around the grounds and visit the castle's ruins.

Guide providing historical information about the castle

We enjoyed walking around the grounds and taking pictures. After our castle visit, we hit the road. I think we had about a 100 miles to our first stop. We drove through a few small towns and ended up stopping at a small golf course club for a late lunch.

The owners of the club restaurant were lovely and we enjoyed our soup and sandwiches. We didn't stay long, so we took a few pics and headed off. We knew there would be some tough single road driving ahead and visibility was poor.

Road to Applecross has no name as shown on our GPS

One lane roads for many miles...uphill and in fog

Michael did most of the single lane driving through the Applecross hills. The fog was terrible in spots and we had to move quite slowly. There were few places to pull over for oncoming traffic, but the drivers we came across were polite. It seemed once a car spotted another car, the one who had the most room pulled over and waited. No road rage here.

When the fog lifted in sections, we stopped for some pics. As promised, we came across sheep and cyclists.

Also need to watch for cyclists on the narrow road. Notice the small widening of the road to make way for any oncoming cars.

We made it to Torridon, our first stop in the Highlads, just before dinner. It was an interesting first day on the NC500. The scenery and landscape along the way was gorgeous. I fear our pictures just don't do it justice. We were certainly looking forward to exploring more of the Highlands.