'North Coast 500'... a stunning drive.. Pictures!

[Prohibiting]

My partner and I talked about doing this last summer and it's happened! On 28/03/16 we set off from our home near Gloucester at 6am to begin our week long road trip up to Scotland and around the Scottish Highlands. Neither of us have been to Scotland before so we were looking forward to something different.

Below is our itinerary

Day 1 (28/03/16): Gloucester to Loch Ness - approx. 510 miles - 9 hours
Activities/other visits: Falls of Foyers (waterfall walk), beautiful views out to the Loch

Day 2 (29/03/16): Loch Ness to Dingwall - approx. 30 miles - 50 minutes
Activities/other visits: Chanonry Point, Rogie Falls walk, Nigg Bay Wetlands

Day 3 (30/03/16): Dingwall to Tongue - approx. 175 miles - 4 hours
Activities/other visits: Dunrobin Castle, John O Groats, Sannick Bay/rock stacks, Dunnet Head (Britain's most Northernly point)

Day 4 (31/03/16): Tongue to Lochinver - approx. 85 miles - 2 hours
Activities/other visits: Cocoa Mountain chocolate factory, 3 mile hike up a mountain to reach Eas a' Chual Aluinn (UK's highest waterfall) 6 mile total hike in 5 hours, The Albannach Michelin restaurant

Day 5: (01/04/16): Lochinver to Gairloch - approx. 90 miles - 2 hours
Activities/other visits: Perfume shop tea room. We took this day easy

Day 6: 02/04/16): Gairloch to Home, Gloucester - approx. 580 miles - 10.5 hours
Activities/other visits: None. The drive from Gairloch to the Applecross pass was stunning, arrived home 11pm.

We stayed in a different B&B each night, pre-booked.

From start to finish, we did 1720 miles and averaged 35MPG in my Saab 9-5 Aero. A very comfortable but fun drive too!


Below are just a few snaps. Hope you enjoy!










































Oh, and on the Thursday where we had glorious sunshine (in fact, the weather was pretty good the whole week), I popped the question at Eas a' Chual Aluinn, the UK's highest waterfall

Edited by Prohibiting on Monday 11th April 20:42

[Prohibiting]

Those of you that are doing parts of it, you'll love it. The West Coast is beautiful. Also thank you for the congrats .

[Prohibiting]

2gins said:

Really nice car, but possibly about 5 years premature! I see the appeal though, I had a thing for the Volvo 850R at one time, I was doing my A levels. I still would.

Nice trip too. Thanks for sharing.

Do you own a caravan or boat? No? Tow hook off!

Blame my 45kg German Shepherd I used to have a mint, unmodified 1999 Subaru Impreza Turbo 2000 however obviously I needed a different style of car in order to transport him about. I'll be getting a fun weekend car eventually though .

The tow bar isn't easily detachable. I've had a look and it appears to be a bumper off jobbie to get it off. I've towed with it twice though and it is handy to have (I'm a farmer and have used to tow a 14ft stock trailer with a load of wood in the back). It was quite fun accelerating fast with an empty stock trailer on the back though

[Prohibiting]

moldy said:

Harsh!!

Definately going to tick this off this year, thanks for sharing & congrats!!

Don't worry, it's perfectly fine for him to have his opinion. He commented that word on some other forums that I'm a member of and the easiest thing to do is just to ignore it. However now that it's been brought up, here's one to make him even more jealous




Thank you all! Definitely a recommended part of the world to visit! I can imagine the roads being quite busy in the summer which could get annoying at times, particularly along the narrow track roads.

Edited by Prohibiting on Friday 22 April 22:29