Fun with Scottish weather, clutches and the NC500!
What a heading, hey?! So after 6 months working on and off in England, we decided to explore the UK in our Luna. We had already done the South coast and Wales in HooHoo, so we decided to venture up north this time, as well as going to Scotland to do the North Coast 500.
We ticked off the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales (which were our favourite), the Snakes Pass (and a pint at the highest pub in England, of course!), and even ventured to Whitby to have fish and chips, whilst hoping no seagulls would come down on us although in Scarborough Stacey did find out how lucky it is to be pooped on by one!
Parked up on the Snake Pass with incredible views
For our 3rd year wedding anniversary we got the train into Manchester to go to the Washroom (fancy, I know right?!). No seriously, it’s a really awesome cocktail bar, where we had a wide variety of cocktails, from alcoholic coco pops, to Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, and all things in-between, including trying a Schezuan bell pepper which made your mouth go numb for about 5 minutes! Our biggest struggle travelling around England was my love for ale, Stacey’s love for cheese, and just about every area had a farm shop, so it would be rude to not pop in of course!
We soon made it up to Scotland and spent a few days seeing Stacey’s family before making our way up to the NC500! We only made it as far as the road up to Inverness before Luna’s clutch gave out… our hearts sunk as we were safely towed to a lay-by to wait for recovery. When they came they told us that they wouldn’t be able to fix it and to let them know which garage we wanted to take it to. Luckily, they lent us a car for the night so we were able to drive back down to Stacey’s aunt and uncle who kindly homed in the interim. 5 days later Luna was fixed after £500 spent! But alas, we put that behind us and once again ventured up to the NC500.
We stopped at the Loch Ness for our first night, and I had to do an obligatory swim as my dad had when he was a kid, so therefore I had to, of course. Luckily Nessy was nowhere to be seen!
We decided to do the NC500 anti-clockwise as after a bit of research we found that it meant that the views would only get nicer as the roads only got narrower. And google wasn’t wrong! I think our highlights were the breathtaking scenery, and even though we only got about 1 or 2 days of sunshine out of the 10 days we had, it still was jaw-dropping. We did the obligatory whiskey tour, choosing Old Pulteney as the distillery to try and enjoy a wee dram or two, but decided one tour was enough as otherwise we wouldn’t get to see much else! And also went and saw one of the many castles, Eileen Donan, which although quaint, had a special charm. We were also in awe of the many Highland Cows, with their lovely temperaments even after battling the cold and wet winds of Scotland. And for a special treat, we enjoyed hand dived scallops at Ullapool with a nice glass of G&T. (Hover or click on the images for the description)
The route was busy even in May, but luckily there weren’t many midges, and even though there were many other campervanners, we always managed to find a remote spot to enjoy the scenery. We did feel like all the NC500 was missing was a couple of welcoming pubs with cosy fireplaces and nice pints of dark bitter!
Towards the end of the route we swung by Isle of Skye, but sadly the weather was terrible so we just ended up doing lots of drive by’s of the popular sites including the Fairie Pools and the Storr. We were also in a bit of a rush towards the end of our trip as we had planned to see friends in Leeds and also had my cousins wedding in Wales shortly after!
Our next blog post will be up shortly, sharing our stories from Belgium and Luxembourg!
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