MY NC500

September 2025. I went to Scotland to drive a road.

At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.

Vanilla was loaded, cameras charged, Mini 4 Pro packed and the usual NIX collection of cables, chargers, batteries and technological clutter distributed around the van in places I was absolutely certain I would remember later.

The plan sounded simple enough.

Drive the NC500. Photograph it. Fly the drone. Live in Vanilla. Drink tea. Repeat.

What I didn’t realise was that the road was going to become almost the least interesting thing about the journey.

📸 EXPLORE ALL 979 NC500 PHOTOS

THE MOMENT THE HIGHLANDS GOT BIG

Turning west was where the journey changed.

The landscape opened, the roads narrowed and suddenly I wasn't interested in getting anywhere quickly. Places I'd looked at on a map as little dots began swallowing entire hours.

Then I put the Mini 4 Pro into the air at Kyle of Tongue.

That's Vanilla down there.

My bed. My kitchen. My shelter. My transport. My little Indium Grey world with orange bits.

From the ground she's everything.

From the drone she's practically a punctuation mark.

I love that photograph because it explains the Highlands better than twenty paragraphs of adjectives ever could. It made me feel very small, and strangely delighted about it.

DURNESS: SCOTLAND STARTS SHOWING OFF

Then came Durness.

Sango Sands looked almost ridiculous. Pale sand, cliffs, dunes and water that periodically forgot it was supposed to be Scottish and turned turquoise.

I made a 360-degree photograph there because a normal frame didn't seem enough.

Every direction worked.

Cliffs one way. Atlantic another. Dunes behind me. Huge sky above.

I'd gone looking for a driving route and instead found myself standing still.

LOCH ERIBOLL: THE PHOTO THAT CHANGED AFTER I TOOK IT

Loch Eriboll looked wonderfully peaceful.

Silver water. Mountains. Open space. Hardly a sound.

I stopped because it was beautiful.

Only afterwards did I discover that surrendered German U-boats arrived in Loch Eriboll at the end of the Second World War.

And that completely altered this photograph for me.

I can look at exactly the same stretch of calm water now and imagine submarines moving through it in May 1945.

That's one of the things photography does rather brilliantly. Sometimes you don't understand everything you photographed until years later.

SANGOBEG: NO ATTRACTION. NO FANFARE. JUST THIS.

This is another reason I became so attached to the north-west.

Sangobeg wasn't something I needed to tick off a list.

It was simply there.

A little crescent of sand beneath the cliffs, Atlantic stretching away beyond it and hardly anybody around.

The NC500's famous stops are wonderful, but places like this were arguably better because they felt discovered rather than consumed.

SCOURIE: THREE BILLION YEARS AND A DJI DRONE

Then Scourie happened.

This was one of the moments where the drone earned its place in Vanilla.

From above, the bay turned turquoise.

Not Photoshop turquoise. Not brochure turquoise.

Actually turquoise.

Then I discovered that some of the rocks around this part of north-west Scotland are approaching three billion years old.

Three billion.

Vanilla is a 2022 VW.

There was something wonderfully absurd about parking her beside geology billions of years older than her while worrying whether my DJI batteries were at 100 percent.

AND THEN VANILLA GOT HER OWN PORTRAIT

This might be one of the photographs that sums up the trip best.

Vanilla sitting beside Scourie Bay. Indium Grey against the Highland landscape, orange details catching the light and that ridiculous blue water behind her.

A campervan changes travel.

The destination isn't somewhere you arrive and then look for accommodation.

You arrive with home.

Put the kettle on. Open the door. Look outside.

That'll do nicely.

ACHMELVICH: HAS SOMEBODY MOVED THE CARIBBEAN?

Achmelvich was ridiculous.

There's no sophisticated travel-writing terminology required here.

It was just ridiculous.

White sand.

Glass-clear shallows.

Turquoise water.

And, because this is still Scotland, a breeze capable of reminding you very quickly that swimming trunks would be an optimistic wardrobe decision.

The photograph hardly looks Scottish.

The geology underneath it, however, is ancient Highland Scotland at its most outrageous.

THE OFFICIAL HIGHLAND INSPECTION DEPARTMENT

Obviously, no trip around northern Scotland is complete until one of these has stared through you.

I don't know what Highland cattle think about tourists.

I suspect the answer is very little.

They just stand there, chewing, wearing haircuts that would bankrupt a London salon and looking as though the last several centuries have been mildly disappointing.

WHAT I UNDERSTAND NOW

Going back through these photographs changed the trip for me.

At the time I was concentrating on light, weather, roads, drone batteries, campsites, food, parking Vanilla and whatever magnificent bit of Scotland had just appeared through the windscreen.

Later I started discovering what was underneath the photographs.

The surrendered submarines at Loch Eriboll.

Ancient geology around Scourie.

Iron Age communities around the north-west coast.

Centuries of fishing, crofting, religion, warfare and engineering.

And suddenly the photographs weren't merely records of places I'd visited.

They were little windows into stories I'd driven straight through without fully realising it.

I DIDN'T CONQUER THE NC500

I don't particularly like that expression anyway.

You don't conquer somewhere like this because you've driven around it.

I drove through it.

I stopped.

I photographed it.

I flew above bits of it.

I ate extremely well in several bits of it.

I drank tea while staring at it.

And occasionally I parked Vanilla somewhere, opened the door and simply thought:

How on earth is this Britain?

That's my NC500.

Not a badge.

Not a checklist.

979 photographs, one video, one little grey campervan and an enormous piece of Scotland that somehow became even more interesting after I got home.

📸 OPEN THE COMPLETE NC500 FLICKR ALBUM

Photography: John Nickolls / NIX Drones
Drone photography: DJI Mini 4 Pro

September 2025. I went to Scotland to drive a road.

At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.

Vanilla was loaded, cameras charged, Mini 4 Pro packed and the usual NIX collection of cables, chargers, batteries and technological clutter distributed around the van in places I was absolutely certain I would remember later.

The plan sounded simple enough.

Drive the NC500. Photograph it. Fly the drone. Live in Vanilla. Drink tea. Repeat.

What I didn’t realise was that the road was going to become almost the least interesting thing about the journey.

📸 EXPLORE ALL 979 NC500 PHOTOS

THE MOMENT THE HIGHLANDS GOT BIG

Turning west was where the journey changed.

The landscape opened, the roads narrowed and suddenly I wasn't interested in getting anywhere quickly. Places I'd looked at on a map as little dots began swallowing entire hours.

Then I put the Mini 4 Pro into the air at Kyle of Tongue.

That's Vanilla down there.

My bed. My kitchen. My shelter. My transport. My little Indium Grey world with orange bits.

From the ground she's everything.

From the drone she's practically a punctuation mark.

I love that photograph because it explains the Highlands better than twenty paragraphs of adjectives ever could. It made me feel very small, and strangely delighted about it.

DURNESS: SCOTLAND STARTS SHOWING OFF

Then came Durness.

Sango Sands looked almost ridiculous. Pale sand, cliffs, dunes and water that periodically forgot it was supposed to be Scottish and turned turquoise.

I made a 360-degree photograph there because a normal frame didn't seem enough.

Every direction worked.

Cliffs one way. Atlantic another. Dunes behind me. Huge sky above.

I'd gone looking for a driving route and instead found myself standing still.

LOCH ERIBOLL: THE PHOTO THAT CHANGED AFTER I TOOK IT

Loch Eriboll looked wonderfully peaceful.

Silver water. Mountains. Open space. Hardly a sound.

I stopped because it was beautiful.

Only afterwards did I discover that surrendered German U-boats arrived in Loch Eriboll at the end of the Second World War.

And that completely altered this photograph for me.

I can look at exactly the same stretch of calm water now and imagine submarines moving through it in May 1945.

That's one of the things photography does rather brilliantly. Sometimes you don't understand everything you photographed until years later.

SANGOBEG: NO ATTRACTION. NO FANFARE. JUST THIS.

This is another reason I became so attached to the north-west.

Sangobeg wasn't something I needed to tick off a list.

It was simply there.

A little crescent of sand beneath the cliffs, Atlantic stretching away beyond it and hardly anybody around.

The NC500's famous stops are wonderful, but places like this were arguably better because they felt discovered rather than consumed.

SCOURIE: THREE BILLION YEARS AND A DJI DRONE

Then Scourie happened.

This was one of the moments where the drone earned its place in Vanilla.

From above, the bay turned turquoise.

Not Photoshop turquoise. Not brochure turquoise.

Actually turquoise.

Then I discovered that some of the rocks around this part of north-west Scotland are approaching three billion years old.

Three billion.

Vanilla is a 2022 VW.

There was something wonderfully absurd about parking her beside geology billions of years older than her while worrying whether my DJI batteries were at 100 percent.

AND THEN VANILLA GOT HER OWN PORTRAIT

This might be one of the photographs that sums up the trip best.

Vanilla sitting beside Scourie Bay. Indium Grey against the Highland landscape, orange details catching the light and that ridiculous blue water behind her.

A campervan changes travel.

The destination isn't somewhere you arrive and then look for accommodation.

You arrive with home.

Put the kettle on. Open the door. Look outside.

That'll do nicely.

ACHMELVICH: HAS SOMEBODY MOVED THE CARIBBEAN?

Achmelvich was ridiculous.

There's no sophisticated travel-writing terminology required here.

It was just ridiculous.

White sand.

Glass-clear shallows.

Turquoise water.

And, because this is still Scotland, a breeze capable of reminding you very quickly that swimming trunks would be an optimistic wardrobe decision.

The photograph hardly looks Scottish.

The geology underneath it, however, is ancient Highland Scotland at its most outrageous.

THE OFFICIAL HIGHLAND INSPECTION DEPARTMENT

Obviously, no trip around northern Scotland is complete until one of these has stared through you.

I don't know what Highland cattle think about tourists.

I suspect the answer is very little.

They just stand there, chewing, wearing haircuts that would bankrupt a London salon and looking as though the last several centuries have been mildly disappointing.

WHAT I UNDERSTAND NOW

Going back through these photographs changed the trip for me.

At the time I was concentrating on light, weather, roads, drone batteries, campsites, food, parking Vanilla and whatever magnificent bit of Scotland had just appeared through the windscreen.

Later I started discovering what was underneath the photographs.

The surrendered submarines at Loch Eriboll.

Ancient geology around Scourie.

Iron Age communities around the north-west coast.

Centuries of fishing, crofting, religion, warfare and engineering.

And suddenly the photographs weren't merely records of places I'd visited.

They were little windows into stories I'd driven straight through without fully realising it.

I DIDN'T CONQUER THE NC500

I don't particularly like that expression anyway.

You don't conquer somewhere like this because you've driven around it.

I drove through it.

I stopped.

I photographed it.

I flew above bits of it.

I ate extremely well in several bits of it.

I drank tea while staring at it.

And occasionally I parked Vanilla somewhere, opened the door and simply thought:

How on earth is this Britain?

That's my NC500.

Not a badge.

Not a checklist.

979 photographs, one video, one little grey campervan and an enormous piece of Scotland that somehow became even more interesting after I got home.

📸 OPEN THE COMPLETE NC500 FLICKR ALBUM

Photography: John Nickolls / NIX Drones
Drone photography: DJI Mini 4 Pro