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This is the fourth and last part of our report on the Scotland Rally 2019. Click here for part 1, part 2 and part 3.

The 9th of August – 345 km:

Today we got to choose which route we wanted to take.

There was the option to do a short drive of 172 km or a long drive that included the all known NC500.

The North Coast 500 is comparable with Route 66 or the Stelvio Pass. A pretty impressive drive today! Maarten and Lennert didn’t sleep on the campsites every night and so we met up with them at the entrance. Maarten promised to go full out with his Alfa GT, so we were prepared that we would have to keep up. But pretty fast we switched positions, because even though I love classic cars, the exhaust is not always the best.

Okay, so we drive first! You can say many thing about driving left in the UK, but when it comes down to the speed limits, we could all agree on one thing: Belgium can learn a thing or two of their system. On most places you can just drive at miles, which is 97 km/h. Which means that we barely to never crossed the speed limit, because on many roads it’s almost impossible to reach that kind of speed. Or in other words: We couldn’t reach that speed, the English people however, they know their way around a gas pedal and are not afraid to use it. And even though the speed limit is higher than in Belgium, the amount of accidents is less than in our Country. I couldn’t help but notice that it might have something to do with the fact that people from the UK are occupied with actually driving, instead of messing with their phones…

I can keep writing about how beautiful the routes were, but most of all I would like you to try them out for yourselves one day. At noon we stopped in Applecross to have some lunch and catch up with each other about the drive. We already stopped many times, but because of the cold we were not talking that much and went back to our cars pretty quickly. We agreed on coming back in the future, to drive the full NC500.

The arrival was in Isle of Skye, Scotland. You could reach the destination by driving across a beautiful bridge, and then there was still a pretty long drive ahead of us. It would also be our last night sleeping in a tent.Nearby the campsite we could still complete 2 challenges. One of them was to fill the car with as many people possible, and another one was to go take a dip in the Fairy Pools. Unfortunately, we didn’t get there anymore.

This night, the winner from series 2 was also going to be announced. As expected, the winners were “The Braves of Belgium”. These men have completed the whole journy in an old Fiat 500. Respect! They also completed almost every challenge with succes. A well earned victory, we can say.

The announcement took place in a pub next to the campsite. The pub had a whisky collection of over 400 different malts out of each corner of Scotland. I tasted a wooden, different taste, which was not bad at all. A whisky is good and such, but you stay thirsty. So pretty quickly we changed to drinking Ale again.

Around midnight we decided to go to sleep, because tomorrow we had a pretty heavy day waiting for us. Destination: Edinburgh.

The pub closed around 1 o’clock and even though there was communication beforehand to say that it was a more “silent campsite”, some people seemed to think otherwise. A very short night of sleep was the result.

The 10th of August – 400 km:

Because of the lack of sleep last night, a challenge stood before us. Our destination of today was Dunfirmline, where we would stay in a guesthouse.

Anne (one of the participants) ha advised us to drive a bit further up to Kilt Rock to admire the Mealt Falls. It was very much worth it! The only thing was that is was very cold up there and also pretty foggy. We felt like we were in the middle of a big cloud. So the picture is not a good resemblance of what you see in real life! Afterwards, we continued towards Uig. De NC500 may be a fantastic route, this one came pretty close. So if you would ever consider visiting Isle of Skye, take the short route. It’s not the easiest one, but very beautiful to drive through.

From Uig we tried to go a little faster. After all we still had hundreds of kilometres ahead of us and because of the roads, it doesn’t always drive smoothly. Ofcourse we stopped multiple times on our way back. One of the first stops was Loch Duich, where we admired a beautiful view on the Eilean Donan Castle.
The drive led us up to Perth, and Loïc and me thought “if we see something fun, we will stop”. And so we stopped at the distillery of Dalwhinnie. We asked for some information about the possibilities to visit and except for the fact that we had to still drive for more than half an hour, this visit on it’s own would already last an hour. Too bad, but another something to add to the “must visit in the future” list. Arrived in Perth, we stopped for some coffee and cake (of course) ?. There was some kind of market going on, which made it pretty crowded. Our short visit showed that this is also a town that deserves a second visit.

Another 40 minutes of driving and we would arrive at our guesthouse. After almost a full day of rain, I didn’t mind putting the car aside for a bit. The warm welcome in Clarke Cottage made us feel right at home. The owners helped us with the reservation of a restaurant in town. Except for the fact that it was pouring rain outside, we made a great night out of it.

The 11th of August – 417 km:

After a good night rest and a refreshing breakfast, we were ready to face our last drive up ahead. The first visit was Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland since 1437. Edinburgh is a city that was partly built on top of a rock, which was given away by the many stairs and streets. The centre of Edinburgh has two parts: Old Town and New Town. Both parts are on the UNESCO world heritage list since 1995. A city to most definitely visit again and spend some more time on doing so.

After our visit in Edinburgh, we practically drove straight up to Hull to catch our boat. Once we had the keys of our cabins and put away our stuff, we could enjoy the sunset on the deck.

View our video of the past two days here!
Conclusion:

If you like driving a car, enjoy beautiful nature, love the companion of some fun young people, and you don’t mind camping: I would not know wat is stopping you to get inscribed for the edition of 2020. It will be the roadtrip of your lifetime!

Negative things? Well, there will always be something you can be critic about, but if you have the right mindset, than your worries will melt away before the sun.
My compliments towards the organisation!

Here you can find the link to the official website.
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Here you can find the link to our Facebook.

Report: Patrick Verheeken
Photo’s: Patrick & Loïc Verheeken
Film: Loïc Verheeken
Translation by: Rani de Koker (thanks Rani!!)