Reach for your bucket list and write North Coast 500.

I don’t care how you do it, just do it. Clearly the best way is by motorcycle … that’s a given. But if you can’t do it by motorcycle then a small car or camper (if you want to save money on accommodation). Just don’t take a motorhome they really are too big for these roads, and it’d be a slow and frustrating trip.

So what’s the NC500 like.? If I were to try to explain it, it would be a mixture of the Great Ocean Road (for coastal scenery), mixed in with Dinner Plains in the Victorian high country, with the steep tight winding roads of Stelvio. Oh, and then make a lot of that on a single-track tarmac goat track.

Just Awesome.!

I was a little worried today about doing the miles as single-track can be slow, and I thought most of today was going to be on single-track. However, a good portion of the first hour was spent on normal 2-way traffic. So we made good time.

Then, we were again treated to lush green valleys with the mountain tops in the clouds. Like a scene out of Lord of the Rings and all a bit eerie.

After some time off the bike for a coffee in the coastal village of Shielaig, we take on the coast road to Applecross. Of all the single-track roads, this is the narrowest and busiest that we’ve ridden to date. Luckily, it isn’t peak season yet … that’s meant to be really busy.

From Applecross we head over the Applecross pass which is both steep and narrow, there were a number of times the dance didn’t always go to plan. Even we had to think skinny in a few places at one point I’m sure I only had half a tyre on the bitumen.

From here, we turn off the NC500 (which now loops back to Inverness), and we continue to the Isle of Skye where we will spend the next couple of nights.

Today’s total distance – 170 miles

Isle of Skye

Everyone has told us how beautiful the Isle of Skye is so we planned an extra day here to check out the sights.

The other thing everyone wanted us about was midgees, so we purchased some midgee nets. Unfortunately they don’t help very much when you leave them back in your room.!

Neist Point – there is a lighthouse sitting on the tip of Neist Point. There is a walk you can take out to the lighthouse. Alternatively, there’s a nice viewpoint where you can take in the whole vista without expending all the extra energy.

Walking up to the view point was the first time we experienced midgees and they were bad. Really bad. Neck sock over your mouth bad. They were everywhere. You couldn’t get away from them. There were thousands of the little critters getting in everywhere. Australian flies have nothing on these things.

I swear I could taste the little buggers as we rode away.

Dunvegan Castle – a castle of the MacLeods which we could walk through and like other castles they had a vast array of paintings and period artifacts showing the purpose of various rooms and how they lived.

Within the castle, they had an original Claymore (meaning great sword in Gaelic) displayed dating back before 1528 – as the claymore is featured on the 8th clan chief’s tombstone of 1528.

Old Man of Storr – a rock formation of a number of solitar rock spires in front on the main road formation.

To get a good view of this required a 2 mile walk up a steep slope. Unfortunately motorcycle boots don’t make good hiking shoe.

Bugger, if only I had my runners…

A few more photos on the Isle of Skye.

Does the Isle of Skye live up to the hype.? Does it have stunning scenery… yes. Is it better than other Scottish scenery down the west coast… I don’t think so. Would I encourage people to visit the Isle of Skye… yes.

This afternoon, we retreated to a pub for a drink and early dinner to hide from the sun as we were a bit sun burnt.

Getting sunburnt in Scotland wasn’t something I was prepared for.!!

Today’s total distance – 150 miles.