NC500: I TOOK VANILLA AROUND THE TOP OF SCOTLAND AND CAME HOME WITH 980 REASONS TO GO BACK

September 2025. I pointed Vanilla north and went looking for the NC500.

I thought I was going to drive a famous road.

What I actually found was twelve days of weather, beaches, bridges, mountains, ferries, tiny harbours, enormous skies, campervan breakfasts, drone batteries, haddock, a Highland coo, the occasional questionable meal decision and the repeated discovery that Scotland can make an Indium Grey VW look very, very small.

And now, thanks to finally getting my complete Flickr export into one place, I can see the journey in forensic detail. The album contains 980 photographs. Of those, 948 carry geotags. The pictures stretch from my run north on 21 September 2025 through to the journey south in early October.

This is not a generic guide to the North Coast 500.

This is my NC500. My van. My photographs. My stops. My ridiculous number of camera files. My Scotland.

📸 OPEN THE COMPLETE 980-PHOTO NC500 FLICKR ALBUM

THE FIRST RULE OF MY NC500: GET TO SCOTLAND

The NC500 gets presented as a neat loop on maps, but a road trip never starts on the neat bit. It starts at home.

My first day was a proper northbound shove. Staffordshire disappeared in the mirrors, England unrolled beneath Vanilla and by late afternoon the photographs had me passing the Inverness end of the Highlands and bending towards the Moray Firth.

Then I reached Balintore.

That was where the trip stopped feeling like a transit day and started feeling like the adventure I had come for.

BALINTORE: THE ROAD TRIP SWITCHES ON

Balintore gave me the Moray Firth, the Mermaid of the North, sea air and that first proper campervan sensation of having arrived somewhere simply because I could.

The Flickr trail has me photographing the Mermaid in the evening, then waking to the same coastline the following morning. There is even a photograph of a NIX Drones mug of tea, which feels important. Great expeditions are supposedly built on courage and planning. Mine are also built on tea.

JOHN O' GROATS: YES, I TOOK THE PHOTO

From Balintore I kept pushing north.

At 14:06 on 22 September, one of the Flickr records puts me at the famous John o' Groats signpost. There are some photographs you simply have to take. Pretending to be too sophisticated for the John o' Groats sign would be like refusing chips at the seaside because they are predictable.

I took the photograph.

Of course I did.

Then came Thurso, the north coast, harbour air and a curry night that entered the photographic record. The landscape was beginning to change. The east had carried me north quickly. The west was about to slow everything down.

THURSO TO TONGUE: NOW SCOTLAND STARTS SHOWING OFF

The next day the route stretched west through the far north of Sutherland. A little boat at Aultivullin made the archive because apparently I am incapable of passing an interesting boat, van, bridge, road sign or cloud without pressing a shutter button.

By evening I was at the Kyle of Tongue.

This was one of the defining stops of the whole trip. Vanilla parked beside a view that would have been considered excessive anywhere else, mountains sitting behind the water and the evening light doing its best to make every direction look like a desktop wallpaper.

Then the drone went up.

That changed the scale completely.

From ground level, the Kyle is beautiful. From above, you suddenly understand the geometry of it: water, road, mountain, campsite and this tiny collection of vans occupying a microscopic patch of the Highlands.

LOCH ERIBOLL, SANGOBEG AND DURNESS: THE WORLD GETS BIGGER

Leaving Tongue meant another extraordinary stretch of road. The camera trail moves along the coast towards Loch Eriboll, then through Sangobeg and into the Durness area.

This is the part of Scotland where distance becomes strange. A place can be only a handful of miles away on the map and still involve a road that wriggles around water, rock and gradient as though somebody designed it with a pencil while sitting on a washing machine.

I stayed around Sango Sands, met Andrea and Sean, ate, wandered, photographed and generally allowed the pace to fall out of the trip.

That slowing down matters.

The NC500 can be driven as a box-ticking exercise. Photograph the sign, photograph the beach, photograph the bridge, next.

I did plenty of photographing, obviously. Nine hundred and eighty pictures have now entered the courtroom as evidence. But the best days were the ones where the road stopped being a schedule.

SMOO CAVE: SCOTLAND INSTALLS A GIANT HOLE IN THE COAST

The following morning brought Smoo Cave.

It is exactly the sort of place the NC500 does well. You leave the van, walk into a landscape that already feels dramatic and then discover the geology has decided to add an enormous cave for emphasis.

From Durness the road carried me south-west towards Scourie.

By mid-afternoon the photographs have settled around Scourie Bay. Blue water, rocky edges, low hills and Vanilla parked in the middle of it all.

There is also a photograph titled Nice Orange Bus.

Important cultural documentation.

KYLESKU, DRUMBEG AND ACHMELVICH: THE ROAD BECOMES THE ATTRACTION

On 26 September I left Scourie and entered one of my favourite sequences of the whole trip.

First came Kylesku Bridge.

I like engineering anyway, and Kylesku is one of those rare structures that improves the landscape rather than simply crossing it. A clean curve of concrete, water below, mountains around it and absolutely no need for visual clutter.

Then the route tightened and wriggled towards Drumbeg. I stopped for a selfie where the road seemed to meet the sky, then carried on towards Achmelvich.

And Achmelvich was ridiculous.

White sand. Clear blue-green water. Dark Highland rock. A beach that looks as though somebody pasted a piece of the Caribbean into Assynt and then added a single-track road just to make access interesting.

ULLAPOOL: I STOPPED RUSHING

By 27 September I had reached Ullapool.

This became more than a fuel-and-food stop. The Flickr trail settles there for the rest of the day and all of the following day. That tells the story better than any itinerary could.

I slowed down.

I photographed the harbour. I watched the ferries. I ate a haddock wrap at the Seafood Shack. I later had haddock and chips, because apparently my nutritional strategy for the west coast was simply to keep pointing at the sea and ordering from it.

Ullapool is where the trip developed a lovely contradiction. I was still moving around one of Britain's most famous driving routes, but I had stopped caring about making progress.

That is campervan travel at its best.

You can stay.

GAIRLOCH: A ROOM WITH EVERY VIEW

On 29 September the road pulled me south again.

The camera locations stretch away from Ullapool, around the coast and eventually into Gairloch. By half past three Vanilla was pitched with one of those views that makes the phrase "room with a view" feel slightly inadequate.

This is why Vanilla changes the way I travel.

A car trip is often about the next hotel. A campervan trip makes the stopping place part of the day. The view outside the door matters. The weather against the windows matters. The first cup of tea in the morning matters.

Scotland understands campervans extremely well in that sense. Not because every stop is easy, but because the reward for finding the right one can be enormous.

SHIELDAIG, CUAIG AND APPLECROSS: THE FINAL WEST-COAST FIREWORKS

The following day turned into another ridiculous sequence of places.

Shieldaig first, with a red roof flashing against the loch and hills.

Then Cuaig, a quieter corner of the Applecross coast.

Then the road curled towards Applecross itself.

Applecross is one of those names that carries its own road-trip mythology, largely because of Bealach na Bà. Hairpins, gradients, huge views and the delicious knowledge that your campervan is about to do actual work for a living.

This was not the place for rushing, posing or pretending the road is wider than it is.

Take your time. Use the passing places properly. Look well ahead. Let people through. Then occasionally stop somewhere safe and remember to look at the landscape rather than only the next bend.

Vanilla did exactly what I bought her to do.

She carried my bed, my food, my cameras, my drone gear and me through one of the best driving landscapes in Britain.

I DIDN'T FINISH WITH A CHECKERED FLAG

After Applecross the shape of the trip changed.

I turned inland and began the long Highland exit through the Great Glen and southwards, with the journey eventually flowing past the big familiar names of Fort Augustus, Glencoe and Loch Lomond.

By 2 October the photographic trail was well south of the Highlands. That evening Vanilla was parked at the Eagle's Head at Over Kellet, near Carnforth.

A pub stop after the NC500 feels about right.

WHAT 980 PHOTOGRAPHS ACTUALLY REMEMBER

The obvious photographs are there.

John o' Groats.

Kyle of Tongue.

Loch Eriboll.

Sango Sands.

Smoo Cave.

Scourie.

Kylesku.

Achmelvich.

Ullapool.

Gairloch.

Shieldaig.

Applecross.

But that is not really what 980 photographs preserve.

They preserve the little boat at Aultivullin.

The NIX mug of tea at Balintore.

Highland chicken on a plate.

A haddock wrap in Ullapool.

A ferry pulling away from the harbour.

A Highland coo with hair that has clearly given up negotiating with the weather.

Another van you liked.

The campsite before everyone was awake.

The road when the light suddenly changed.

Vanilla parked against a view I would otherwise have forgotten the exact shape of.

That is what the archive has given me back.

THE NC500 WAS NEVER REALLY 500 MILES

Not for me.

The number is branding. The road is geography. The trip is everything that happens around it.

It is the run north before the official route begins. It is the night you stay somewhere because the view is too good to leave. It is the detour for a beach. It is launching the drone because the light suddenly works. It is eating fish beside a harbour. It is watching the weather decide the next photograph.

Most of all, it is having a campervan that allows the road to remain open-ended.

I came home with 980 photographs, but the number I care about most is much simpler.

One.

One trip I would happily do again.

Not to reproduce it.

To see what Scotland does differently next time.

📸 EXPLORE MY COMPLETE NC500 PHOTO STORY ON FLICKR

NC500, September and October 2025
John Nickolls / NIX
Vanilla / NIX Drones / Scotland