Saturday 28th September, 2024 – Nunnington, Wombleton

Distance driven: 174.4 miles,
Time at the wheel: 4 hours 05 minutes
Heiland coos spotted: 0

We’d been intending to do the mighty North Coast 500 road trip for some time (certainly since before the pandemic struck) and so this year we decided it was time that we finally got round to it. Now it’s been well documented, at least in theory, and well-publicised. There are numerous guide books, and there’s even an “official” website which seems to have come about when a number of businesses along the route got together and funded a website. So you’d think it would be an easy job to plan such an endeavour. In my experience, you’d be wrong!

There were times when I found myself longing for the good old days of my youth when you’d start planning by sending a stamped addressed envelope to the national tourist board of the country you wanted to visit. They would send you a large pile of brochures with all sorts of useful information, including accommodation guides full of helpful detail. These days every man and his or her dog has an opinion, and attempts to search for information you can rely on get derailed at every tip and turn by paid-for “content” that appears in response to any prompt you can think of. It’s hard to know what can be relied on and what can’t. As a result, three guidebooks (“Rough Guide to the North Coast 500”, “North Coast 500 Guide Book” by Charles Tait, and “North Coast 500 The Road Trip of a Lifetime 2024 ? NC500 Guide Book” by Robbie Roams), two Facebook groups (NC500 A.C.E (arts, crafts, events) and North Coast 500), and an official website (North Coast 500) later I was feeling considerably less informed than I had been when I’d started.

The first decision is which way to go, clockwise or anti-clockwise. The official website contains several itineraries, but some go one way and some go the other. The associated Rough Guide suggests clockwise. Everyone else suggest anti-clockwise on the as it turns out pretty sound reasoning that doing it that way means you save the most spectacular scenery for the final part of the trip. The downside to that is that there are far fewer indoor things to do as you get further in if the weather is against you. And we’re talking Scotland, so you know, it’s likely to be inclement on more than one day.

The second decision is how many days should you allow. A friend of ours did it earlier this year (Artificial Constructs) but could only manage seven days holiday, He was squarely of the opinion that he wished he could have taken more time. We knew we had two weeks to play with but we also knew it was a stupidly long drive just to get to the start so there’d have to be at least one overnight stop each way.

The third decision is how many places to base yourself. Obviously if you are one of the horde of motorhome drivers this is less of an issue, but we wanted a mix of hotel and self-catering options, so did we stay 1, 2 or 3 nights in a place and use it as a base. Initially I thought we’d go for just four stops of three nights each, but then it was hard to get an idea of driving times between places. Plenty of maps/guides tell you distances, but not how long conditions on the ground mean you’d have to allow to cover those distances. Would it mean we wasted a lot of time retracing our steps?

Initially I planned for stops in Inverness, Thurso, Durness and Ullapool. Then I looked at the accommodation offers and some of the reviews, and with a month to go I was rethinking it completely. Instead, we would do two nights each in Inverness, Dornoch, Thurso, Lochinver, Gairloch and one night in Shieldaig so we could be sure of covering all of the 516 miles without the need to repeat too much of the route. This would turn out to be a smart move.

Finally, after much wrangling of maps, websites, and creating my own word document that ran to 30+ pages, we were ready for the off. The morning was spent hauling a reluctant and recalcitrant cat to the local cattery. He loves it there because they make the most tremendous fuss of him. He just hates car travel and yowls like a thing possessed from the moment the engine is fired up to the moment it’s turned off at the destination. Cat sorted we headed north, up the tedious length of the M1 motorway, most of which is currently restricted to 50 miles an hour because of myriad roadworks while escape areas are added in lieu of the hard shoulder that was taken away to make “smart” motorways not a decade ago. It means a journey that would have taken a little under three hours now takes over four and is deadly boring to boot. It was a relief to arrive at Nunnington and our overnight stay at Hall View Guest Suite. This proved to be a studio flat type affair overlooking nearby Nunnington Hall, and within earshot of the peacocks that live there. The suite was well-equipped, if slightly eccentric.

The plan that night had always been to eat at our friends’ Richard and Lindsey John’s place, The Plough at Wombleton, partly to celebrate the first anniversary of their arrival at what is a delightful village pub in a very foodie area. This meant we knew we’d be having a great first night dinner! We’d also agreed to meet up with friends, W and E, and so an excellent evening was in store.

As ever Richard didn’t let us down. A couple of glasses of Yorkshire Fizz from Westow Vineyard got the evening off to a very convivial start, and the food as ever was excellent. The treacle and citrus-cured salmon, with prawns, melon and pickled cucumber was a fabulous reminder that summer was still lingering, if only just and the lamb kofta was better than any I’ve eaten in the last decade. Mains were equally good, both lamb and duck cooked to perfection.  The wine was also well-chosen, but then it always is. 

Once we’d finished eating, and the crowd had thinned, we had time for a proper catch-up with Richard and Lindsey before retreating to Nunnington for a good night’s sleep before it got too late. We would be moving just slightly further north the following day.