Elspeth Grace

The North Coast 500 is a route developed by the Scottish tourism board, with the aim of increasing visitor numbers to the beautiful but remote Highlands. Generally the route is undertaken in motorhomes, but Euan and I decided to do it on our bikes. We’d had a test tour on the King Alfred’s Way, a 460 km off-road loop between Reading and Salisbury, which had been character building (pitching a tent at 11:30pm on day two) so felt somewhat prepared for whatever Scotland had to throw at us. Which turned out to be rain, mostly.

We followed the GCN version of the route, designed by Mark Beaumont, which leaves the classic NC500 before John o’ Groats to cut South and avoid the busiest stretch of the A9. This also leaves the route short of its advertised 500 miles, so needs an extra loop around the Black Isle to finish. The GCN lot did it in three days but this seemed unnecessary- it’s worth noting that Mark Beaumont holds the world record for fastest circumnavigation of the Earth by bicycle, which he did in 78 and a half days, so possibly isn’t a suitable judge of “good idea”.

• Day 1: Inverness to Lochcarron (108 kilometres / 67 miles)

The first day took us most of the way from Inverness to the west coast, a fairly dull route but with views of the mountains and we were blessed with decent weather (and our first midges). We had a gentle tailwind for the most part, which was a welcome feature of the whole ride- miraculously the wind kept changing as we changed direction, so there weren’t many days suffering into a headwind. 

• Day 2: Lochcarron to Kinlochewe (101 km / 62 mi)

Day two took us into the hills, with the longest climb in the UK within half an hour of setting out from the campsite. Bealach na Ba has several hairpins and is supposedly the most alpine climb in this country, although the cloud did come to meet us as we rode uphill. It’s 8km / 5 miles averaging 7%, with some savage pitches at the end. This lump in the route profile obscured what was to follow, which ended up being another three hours of very tough up and down, on wet coast roads. We finished in the midgiest campsite in the world, and had to keep walking around while setting up our tent, cooking and having our dinner to avoid being eaten alive.

• Day 3: Kinlochewe to Ullapool (123 km / 76 mi)

We set out early on day three to avoid midges and a wet forecast. We’d planned an easier day, but when we got to our endpoint at Garve we found there was nothing there and it was only lunchtime. We worked our way through a p p p packet of penguins and set off up An Teallach, which was a hard climb on tired legs. We did have a rival group of cycle tourists to catch, and were rewarded for our efforts with cups of tea and Tunnocks tea cakes when we caught up to the van those riders had cunningly left all of their baggage in. Arriving in Ullapool meant visiting The Seafood Shack, eating battered haddock wraps. This was the best thing I’ve eaten this year (although the free Tunnocks tea cake is also in the top five which perhaps devalues my ranking system).

• Day 4: Ullapool to Scourie (104 km / 64 mi)

Having ridden half of day four’s route on day three, we had a day of two half routes. The morning was sunny and rolling, with lovely views of Stac Pollaidh. It all went horribly wrong for me after pies for lunch, and I had my worst day of the tour on a very hard, long road- when it wasn’t going straight up it went straight down, and it rained both heavily and constantly. The day had over 2000m of elevation and I think I felt every metre of it!

• Day 5: Scourie to Durness (46 km / 28 mi)

Day five was a short one as we’d completely butchered our itinerary and needed a short one. We rolled over to Durness and went to a cafe called Cocoa Mountain for a very very good hot chocolate. At this point we were over halfway through the route and had done more than half of the climbing.

• Day 6: Durness to Melvich (92 km / 57 mi)

On the sixth day we were blessed with more rain, with periods of lovely sun. We were both quite cooked, but did get to see birds of prey and some lovely views of the coast. 

• Day 7: Melvich to Rogart (102 km / 63 mi)

Day seven was where we left the standard route and cut southwest, going through the most remote bits of the trip. We went up our final big climb of the trip, and had lunch in Brora, which was the only town for miles around. Then back into empty highlands for some wild camping, with a screeching tawny owl camped up next to us.

• Day 8: Rogart to Portrose (126 km/ 78 mi)

Our penultimate day brought another early start, which combined with a short route lead us to  decide to carry on, onto the Black Isle. This meant going within touching distance of Inverness and then turning off for a 64 kilometre / 40 mile extra loop. Fortunately it was relatively flat with one significant and unwelcome climb away from the lovely coast road, which was not very nice on deadlegs. We got our first portion of chips in Dingwall, shockingly late on in the trip, and looked for dolphins at Portose harbour. 

• Day 9: Portrose to Inverness (25 km / 15 mi)

The last day was very short, just a gentle roll over the bridge into Inverness, then up to the castle to get our “after” photos. We celebrated our victory over the North Coast 500 with Costa mochas before setting off home.

Conclusions

We had planned to cover the distance in nine full days of riding with one rest day in the middle and a couple of shorter days, but ended up doing it in eight and a bit days (the last day only taking about an hour to cover the 15 miles we had left). This was mainly because, on our short days, we’d arrive at our destination and realise there wasn’t much there, so we may as well just keep cycling. We rode with everything we needed- tents, clothing, cooking gear, spares and tools, and bought food en route.  Our preparation included coming up with a comprehensive list of the campsites, cafes, shops and bike shops along the route, found on Google Maps. This was really useful for knowing where we needed to stop (and helped when we did change our plans for distance covered each day). We were lucky with mechanicals, without so much as a puncture between us. We both rode gravel bikes with slick/ road tyres. It was a good, if hard, tour.

Totals

Distance: 827 km / 510 mi

Elevation: 10,764 m / 35314 ft

GCN inspo:

https://youtu.be/8J2gAY-WZhU