The NC500 in Vanilla

An essay by John Nickolls

I didn’t go to Scotland to prove anything.

I didn’t go to chase a route, collect a badge, or compress the Highlands into a checklist. I went because I wanted time to stretch again — and because I suspected that if I let the road decide the pace, something useful might happen.

I took Vanilla, my campervan, because a campervan changes the rules. It removes urgency. It collapses the distance between moving and living. When your bed, kettle, and shelter are already with you, speed stops being impressive and stillness starts to matter.

By the time I returned home, Vanilla’s tracker showed just under 1,500 miles covered across 13 days. That number is the mechanical truth — every bend, every detour, every slow crawl on single-track roads where progress is measured in patience rather than miles per hour.

What it doesn’t show is how often I stopped, stepped out, and let the place finish its sentence.

That part is the story.

Leaving England behind

The first day was always going to be a long one. 459 miles of transition. England passed in sensible chunks: motorways, service stations, junctions designed to be efficient rather than memorable. Geography built to get you somewhere else.

Scotland didn’t announce itself loudly. It announced itself with space.

Somewhere north of Perth, the sky began doing more of the work. Roads quietened. The average speed dropped without effort — not because I chose to slow down, but because the landscape quietly insisted.

By the time I shut Vanilla down on the coast at Balintore, nearly ten hours after setting off, the trip finally felt real. Sea air. Silence. The first proper stop.

East coast rhythm and northern intent

Heading north toward Thurso, the miles stacked up easily. One early, deliberate pause was at the Glenmorangie Distillery — a place built on the idea that good things happen when you don’t rush them.

Further north, Dunrobin Castle stopped me mid-flow. I hadn’t planned it. I just couldn’t not stop. That became a theme: the trip slowly stopped being about where I meant to go, and started being about where I was told to pause.

Reaching John o’ Groats felt significant, but quietly so. I parked, walked, looked, and left without ceremony. Nearby, the stark presence of the Dounreay Nuclear Power Station cut against the romance of the coast — a reminder that this landscape isn’t just beautiful, it’s practical, strategic, and occasionally severe.

Scotland doesn’t do one thing at a time.

Where miles stop meaning much

Turning west, the NC500 changed character completely. Daily distances collapsed. Some days barely reached 60 miles. Others dipped below 30. According to the tracker, progress slowed dramatically. According to me, it was exactly right.

At the Kyle of Tongue, urgency dissolved altogether. I stopped, got out, walked the causeway, and stood still longer than necessary. The road was no longer something to be consumed — it was something to be negotiated.

In Tongue, I noticed the shift properly. I’d stopped asking how far next? and started asking have I actually finished being here yet?

That question stayed with me.

Density over distance

Between Tongue and Durness, the map suggests a short hop. The tracker agrees — around 30 miles. In reality, it absorbed an entire day.

Loch Eriboll stretches time rather than space. Smoo Cave stops you altogether. I parked Vanilla, walked, doubled back, stood still, and forgot what I’d been intending to do next.

The van barely moved for hours. That wasn’t inefficiency. That was attention.

That night in Durness, I settled down early — not because I was tired, but because the day was complete.

The west coast surprise

From Scourie, the road narrowed and the conversation deepened.

At Scourie Bay, I flew the drone — and stopped in disbelief. From above, the water wasn’t the dark Atlantic I expected. It was turquoise, clear and luminous, curling around the bay like something borrowed from another latitude entirely. Standing there with the controller in my hands, I had to remind myself I was on the northwest coast of Scotland.

Further south, the road delivered one of the trip’s most surreal moments.

The beach at Achmelvich Beach looked misplaced. White sand. Turquoise water. It would have felt entirely at home in the Caribbean, not lashed by a Highland breeze. And yet there it was — defiantly Scottish, impossibly beautiful.

I stopped for a long time. The tracker confirms it. I didn’t need proof.

That night I settled down near Clachtoll, feeling like I’d stumbled into a secret the map hadn’t warned me about.

Stillness in Ullapool

By the time I reached Ullapool, Vanilla had covered just over 1,000 miles since leaving home. I stayed an extra day and barely added a single one more.

The van didn’t move.I did — slowly.

According to the data, it was one of the stillest days of the entire trip. According to memory, it was essential.

Applecross, then the Bealach

I reached Applecross and stopped for the night before attempting the Bealach. That decision mattered.

The following morning, I drove the Bealach na Bà in thick fog. Visibility came and went in fragments. Hairpins appeared suddenly, then vanished again. The climb rises to over 2,000 feet, with gradients touching 20%, but none of that mattered.

According to the tracker, my speed dropped to little more than walking pace in places. That felt right.

There was no panoramic reveal at the top. Just mist, silence, and the sense of being inside the landscape rather than looking at it. It was amazing all the same — perhaps more so because of what I couldn’t see.

The easing away

From there, the miles began to stack up again. Passing Eilean Donan Castle, skirting Loch Ness, pausing in Fort Augustus, then committing to longer runs through Glencoe and along Loch Lomond.

One of the final days added nearly 300 miles. Even then, Scotland refused to become background noise.

What the miles actually say

By the end:

• ~1,480 miles recorded by Vanilla’s tracker

• 13 days on the road

• multiple days under 40 miles

• turquoise water where I expected grey

• and a mountain pass climbed in fog, not for the view, but for the experience

After I got home, curiosity took over. I didn’t want this trip to fade into a vague that was brilliant. I wanted to understand it properly.

So I correlated everything — using ChatGPT alongside data from Vanilla’s Scorpion vehicle tracker, my Polarstepslog, and the FindPenguins app. The tracker gave me the hard mileage truth. The apps filled in the human layer: walking, wandering, pausing, and moments that mattered enough to name.

What surprised me most was how well it all agreed.

The numbers didn’t flatten the experience. They sharpened it. They proved that the days with the fewest miles were often the richest, and that the places where I stopped longest were exactly the places I remember most clearly.

I didn’t conquer the NC500.

I listened to it.

And somewhere above Scourie Bay, watching turquoise water from a drone’s-eye view, it answered back — mile by mile, pause by pause, in its own time.

— John Nickolls