Our Travel Blog

Our last day of the NC500! Last night was another “Spar” night, i.e. grab some snacks from the local supermarket. It seems the towns and villages on the NC500 are suffering a massive staffing shortage on the catering front. Despite that, the hotel deserves a picture.

Today was a bit odd insomuch as we had little left to do, but there was too much to do to finish the trip yesterday. Given that hindsight is 20/20 we may have done better by stopping earlier yesterday, and starting off today with the Applecross loop. Today’s one and only planned stop was a walk to the Rogie waterfalls.

The scenery changed from barren rocks to grass and green trees. I hadn’t mentioned earlier, but in a lot of the places we travelled through, there were no trees.

We stopped for coffee, and for some reason there was a wall of tea pots!

We arrived at the hotel a couple of hours early, and we couldn’t check in so we just ambled around the countryside (for a change) and went into the local town of Dingwall.

Again, the hotel has staffing problems and their restaurant is only open 3 days a week, today isn’t one of them so we will go out and treat ourselves to some typical Highland food—–an Indian Curry!

Well, the meal was excellent!

Looking back over the last week, it was well worth doing! Lyn had planned out an excellent itinerary which managed to give us enough to do, but didn’t wear us out. The scenery was excellent and the weather cooperated most days. I found I was a little out of practice for driving on narrow roads while sitting on the other side of the car. After a couple of days I sort got used to it, but the single track roads were a little taxing. I guess old age is setting in!

I suspect this will be the last entry for this trip as the next couple of weeks will be spent with friends and family, so not too much travel. If anything interesting comes up, I’ll make an entry.

The next trip is a cruise on the Danube from Budapest, Hungary to Amsterdam, Holland at the beginning of October. In the mean time I will try to find a better way to post the pictures, it was a PITA this time!!

Ok, we’ll break from the traditional picture of the place we stayed last night, for two reasons. I forgot to take a photo, and I wasn’t impressed with it. We’ve had better rooms with breakfast and dinner included for less than half the price of that place, also it’s location, Ullapool professes to be a tourist town. I think all that means is that they can increase the prices and decrease the services. Trying to find any form of eating establishment that didn’t have a 2 hour wait was not possible, we finished up at the local chippy.

This morning we headed out after tracking down a mediocre breakfast. OK soap box mode off.

Our first stop today was Corrieshaloch, the site of a large gorge. Pictures below

Next are some general views as we drove to the next stop

Below are a couple of shots of Loch Ewe. This loch was used during WWII as a staging area for convoys to the Russian Arctic regions.

The loch is still used by the military today, below is a NATO refueling station.

We finally came to the highlight of todays trip, the Applecross Loop. This is a smaller than usual single track road which climbs to 2053ft ASL and is one of the highest roads in the UK. As you can see the views are spectacular.

Well, I am sure they would have been if the clouds weren’t so low!

Now to the title, we have constantly been warned about the the driving habits of mobile homes on this route. They have been fine, the real idiots on the road are cyclists. They apparently have no situational awareness. They insist on riding two abreast and taking up the whole lane of the road even if there is a queue of cars behind and the cyclists are traveling at magnificent 3 MPH. Also it appears passing places only exist for motor vehicles to allow bikes through in the opposite direction, the cyclists have no concept of using these passing places to allow cars to pass them! Second rant over.

We checked into our guest house and were pleased to find good accommodation.

Todays blog is a little haphazard with little writing other than rants! It’s just one of those days.

I believe I have solved the image size problem. The last entry “WHY” has been modified to show the images correctly…. I think. I’m not sure whether this was a WordPress issue, or an issue caused by my using a tablet rather than a laptop. Maybe someone using a PC or Laptop could let me know if they had problems with the picture sizing?

We’ll get to the title later, but as Lyn will confirm it is a word I have said many times in the last few days!

Below is last nights accomodation, which yet again featured a massive breakfast. Thankfully none of these places have scales, but I am sure some serious weight loss will be required when we get home.

Despite me saying yesterday that I thought the bed and breakfast was beyond the back of beyond, that was not the case. There were a couple of eating places close by, but we decided that the pies that we had bought earlier would do!

We took a tour around when we left and found a large harbour and warehouse facilities that could house about 10 lorries (18 wheelers), so I am guessing there is a major fishing industry there.

Again, the day was more about scenery than destinations. Were were given some advice on the scenic route to take from the B&B owner (it was the same as we had planned), together with some warnings about mobile homes. Back home it is believed that on BMW cars turn signals are an optional extra and that a special course is required to learn how to use them. We were told a similar saying applies to mobile homes up here, but instead of turn signals, the optional extra was reverse gear. I gather a large percentage of mobile homes are first time rentals and the drivers can not or will not reverse back to a passing place. I wonder how that works if two mobile homes meet in a single track road.

As it turns out the scenic route we took was about 25 miles of single track road. However there were plenty of passing places, an the majority of times we met on coming traffic it was at a passing place.

In reality we had no issues with motor homes. However there other concerns.

Probably the biggest issue though were pot holes, it must have been their breeding season, they were all over the place!

Ok, we come to the title “Why?” Well in my mind the picture below sums up my question.

Being a city guy, with limited country living, I just can’t fathom why anyone would live there. It must be 35 miles to the nearest village which might have a small convenience store. Any major stores are probably 85 miles away, schools could be anywhere etc. etc. On the other hand, I am sure that the generations that have lived here would be absolutely hate town or city life, chaque un a son gout (Google it).

As I said earlier today was mostly about the scenery, so here come the pictures.

Despite the GPS saying there was less than a mile to our destination, there were no signs of civilization! Then as we came over a hill and round a corner we saw a cruise ship in a harbour with the town of Ullapool of to the side. We were so shocked we forgot to take a picture!

The scenery is better (it was pretty good before) on the west coast, unfortunately a lot of what we see with the eye can’t be caught on the camera. It seems we have to pay for the better scenery though, the west coast is far more expensive than either the east or the north.

Sorry kids, but we’re spending your inheritance

Tomorrow we continue south down south along the west coast, destination unknown as the map got left in the car.

Last nights hotel was one of a chain across the country, and had only been recently built. We had dinner an breakfast there and, as checkout was not until noon, we decided to watch some of the pomp and ceremony of the Coronation (sorry Claire!)

Yesterdays mist and rain had cleared out and it was blue skies and sunshine when we left. The temperature climbed to 22C(72F) as the day progressed. We had little planned for today, and a couple of those that we did have planned couldn’t be found!

For a lot of the time the road followed the north coast of Scotland with views alternating between stark cliffs and sandy beaches. Again, being the lazy person I am, I’ll just dump a load of pictures below.

We passed by Dounreay, which was the site of Scotland’s first nuclear reactor. It is no longer in use and is slowly being decommissioned.

On one particular beach we decided to go for a walk, but after a few hundred yards we were sinking about six inches into the sand. We turned around!!

As luck would have it we “discovered” a craft village along the route (well sort of along the route!). It appears that it was once a busy place, but I suspect COVID closed a number of the stores down. They now seem to be slowly getting back normal. One store in particular caught our attention and we bought some glass work.

Having been used to fields of brown heather and rocks we were surprised to see some vivid green field very occaisionally.

Our guest house for tonight seemed to be beyond the back of beyond when we found it on the map. When I was scouting out accomodation, it was very difficult to find anything in this area. In preparation for an isolated night and no food, we dropped into a store for a couple of pies, crisps (chips), and a desert.

As we got closer to our destination the clouds got lower, and the temperature got rapidly lower, dropping from 22C (72F) to 13C (56F) in about an hour. As we pulled up at the guest house a couple of things happened, it started to pour with rain, and a small stone wall jumped out behind me stopping the car rapidly! Luckily the 5MPH bumpers worked and there is no sign of damage!

Talking of cars, many of you know we own a 1977 MGB. When my son drove up in his hire car I was somewhat dismayed to find it was an MG, albeit an SUV. Since then we have passed dozens of these cars. Today we discovered an electric MG. What is the world coming to??

Getting back on track, we checked into the guest house. As we expected this was the most spartan one to date. It was clean, the room was small and horror of horrors there was no en-suite bathroom. We did have our own private bathroom but it was across the corridor. First world problems I guess. At least there were some white whine glasses for the Gin & Tonic!!

And the view isn’t bad

Tomorrow we start heading south towards Ullapool.