Friday 11th/Saturday 12th October, 2024 – Sheildaig, Aviemore, Hawnby, Home

Distance driven: 429.0 miles/177.0 miles
Time at the wheel: 7 hours 38 minutes/3 hours 15 minutes
Heiland coos spotted: 0 (but then we hardly expected to)

And so we left Scotland and completed the leg of the NC500 to Inverness, skimming by the edge of the city. First, however, one more breakfast at the Tigh an Eilean Hotel in Shieldaig. The morning weather was once more changeable, but we weren’t especially concerned, because today was all about the driving. The white tailed eagles put in another appearance as we packed the car but again were too high to be photographed clearly even with a 100-400m lens. The herons, on the other hand, flew low just as I was putting a suitcase in the car. It’s amazing just how prehistoric they always look, like some sort of antediluvian aircraft carrier in profile.

The route across from Shieldaig to Inverness completes the North Coast 500 route though it’s a lot less stressful on the driver being mostly “proper” roads with a lane in each direction and sheep in fields with actual fences between us and them. We also saw, on top of a ridge, a single stag complete with a fine set of antlers. Sadly there was nowhere to stop to take a photo, but it was a terrific sight to finish on. After Inverness it’s pretty much the A9 all the way to Glasgow, which became tedious because there are lovely dual carriageway sections every so often, but then it all goes down to one lane, and there are people in ludicrously slow moving motorhomes who are quite happy to build up massive queues behind them with no thought for the inconvenience they are causing. And that despite signs urging slower vehicles to pull over and let the build up dissipate.

We eventually got to the point where we really needed fuel so pulled off the road at Aviemore. Having filled the tank we briefly called in at The Cairngorm Hotel for coffee (where I think they may have overdone the tartan just a tad). 

By the time we came out there were serious problems on the A9 and the satnav was showing solid red in the direction we wanted to go. According to Wikipedia “The section between Perth and Inverness is often cited as being the most dangerous section of the road, and regularly appears in lists of Scotland’s most dangerous roads“. It’s obviously and entirely justifiable claim. There’d been a quite horrible accident involving a car and a woman walking her dogs an hour or so earlier and the whole road was pretty much at a standstill. A quick look at a map and it was obvious that there was an alternative we could try. I was quite happy to take the alternative route from Aviemore to the other side of Kingussie where we rejoined the A9. It probably added a couple of miles on, but it certainly took a lot less time than sitting in the jam on the main road would have done.

Back on the road and it was all going quite well (we’d stopped and shared an M&S smoked salmon sandwich at lunchtime) and then we hit the dreaded A66 and it was pretty much stop-start for miles. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the car was feeling a tad temperamental after the previous day when I tortured it all the way across the Bealach na Ba and down the coast road from Applecross. There was a noticeable reluctances to run smoothly in first gear and instead the initial release of the clutch was fine but as I lift off for the last bit there would be a bang-bang-bang and I would have to slam it into 2nd as fast as I could. This was not good when stuck in an intermittently moving phalanx of Friday afternoon trans-Pennine traffic, and it was making me consider my options on the final push towards our destination for the night, The Owl, at Hawnby in the Hambleton Hills.

If the satnav had its way, I’d be going up Sutton Bank and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d get up there if the low gears were proving so difficult. The reason the satnav was so keen is because the A170 is the main route between Thirsk and Scarborough and that was the direction we were headed. And when you do that you have to deal with the fact that the A170 climbs 160 metres from the Vale of York to the top of the North York Moors in under a mile, taking in three sections of steep 1:4 (25%) inclines along its length. And that’s to say nothing of the hairpin bend halfway up. Alright, it’s a mere foothill compared to what I’d been dealing with, but I was still very keen to avoid it. Unfortunately, avoiding it is trickier than you might think. There is an alternative route that is “recommended for caravans” so we tried to follow that. It is appalling sign-posted and you have to look for a small square on the signs that indicates the way you should go.  Well, we must have missed one somewhere because next thing we’re on a road that is not only just as steep as Sutton Bank, but it’s single track. Finding a place to back out and turn round was not easy. Once we did, I took a look at the map again, figured out where I thought we were and then set a course for Helmsley instead. Only once we were there did I put Hawnby back into the satnav as an option. It was still a little more nerve-wracking than I needed at the end of 450 miles, but we made it.

And this is where the Owl totally came into its own. It had a lovely big flat car park so the car could be left without wondering how I’d get out again. The owner of the place saw how flustered we both were and although we’d booked a table for dinner at 7pm just said “sort yourselves out, come down when you’re ready, and we’ll wait for you”. Not all places would do that. I was very pleased that I’d been paying proper attention when reading an article in The Guardian (yes, I know, but if you had me pegged as reading anything else you’ve really not been paying attention), about recently revived gastro-pubs. It would turn out to be a good decision.

The room was well-equipped and comfortable, the bar was hospitable, and the food was really tasty and really good. There were some specials as well as the regular menu so there was a touch of off-piste eating. We started with the twice-baked leek and  Comté soufflé with hazelnut crumbs, and a confit duck roll, with plum and salted cucumber. For mains there was roast Yorkshire partridge, creamed cabbage, pancetta and quince, and (from the specials) gnocchi with a veal and cep ragu and pangrattato. There was also a bowl of perfectly cooked chips, crisp on the outside, lightly seasoned, and properly fluffy in the middle. Everything was delicious and I suspect the puddings would have been too, but there simply was no room for dessert. The only thing that surprised me was that there was no pheasant on the menu. There were literally hundreds of the dopy birds all over the roads on our way in. They were everywhere almost begging to be run over! 

The following morning, breakfast was also very good (beware the breakfast roll which was actually a whole ciabatta with around six sausages in it). And the we sat in the bar area in front of the log fire while we waited for our breakdown callout to arrive. When the guy showed up an hour later he couldn’t replicate the clutch issue so he took me for a test run round the village and I couldn’t either. So he escorted us back to Thirsk in case we did hit problems, then pulled over and let us go on our way. And that just left 177 miles (and 3 hours and 15 minutes) to home.