I was recommended to visit Applecross by someone before coming to Scotland one of the first times. I now make it a point to visit every time I come because it’s just an amazing view from the top.
From the small road that makes up the NC500, you take a tiny road that wiggles its way up the side of a mountain. Its barely wide enough for a campervan to make it up and has lots of passing spaces for traffic coming the other way. It turns into a valley and climbs the side of it before zigzagging its way out the top and to the summit. Here you get a panoramic view over the coast of the Irish sea, the small islands and the Isle of Skye.
It’s amazing and I recommend anyone who is up this way, make the effort to travel this road. But this time was the best. We stopped at the view point for the evening and watched the sun set over Skye. It was breathtakingly beautiful and breathtakingly cold for what is still ostensibly summer. We just watched the individual rain clouds waft slowly past, showering strips of heathery mountain below us. The sun dipped slowly below each of them in turn, shining increasingly orange as it neared the horizon and shooting shafts of gold and pink into the sky. I tried my best to capture some of the majesty with our camera, and it will give an idea of the natural spectacle, but I haven’t done it justice. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.
We also bumped into Valts at the top. We had got talking at a previous layby viewpoint near Lochcarron and she had followed my recommendation. She was riding a Ducati Multistrada (the newer shape than mine) and had an interesting vinyl pattern on the tank that I asked her about. Turns out, it’s a traditional pattern used in Latvian culture that other Lats Latveranians Latvish Latvians will recognise. She was travelling cheaply and sleeping in a tent wherever she could find a suitable spot. This is great fun in good weather, but hard and cold in Scotland. Right now, most of the campsites and BnB’s are closed or really expensive because of CV-19 so it’s the only option if you don’t have a campervan like us.
We are “Wild Vanning” where we find the best spots and it has been nice and quite so far. This evening however, we are at a known beauty spot so there are 2 other vans here. There is also some hard core chaps in a Berlingo-looking van and another in a tiny tent. I really feel for them because the Berlingo is clearly just their car with a boulder pad as a hard, uncomfortable, mattress in the boot. We have a legit mattress, hot chocolate and a heater which will certainly be being used. The chap in the tent has just realised its started to hail – poor sod.
