By Peter Ross

Davie Nicolson is a small, wiry man of 54 with a white horseshoe mustache and his Harley Davidson cap worn tight and low, lest it be blown out to sea. A fading tattoo on his left forearm
shows a cartoon devil encircled by the words Born to Raise Hell. In truth, Nicolson is more of
a guardian angel, and if he was born to raise anything, it is the heavy slabs of flagstone, which
he hefts up and down the steep stone staircase built into the near-vertical cliff face at the foot of
his garden here in Ulbster, in the far northeast of Scotland.
These Whaligoe Steps, as they are known, were constructed in 1792 to allow the wi ves of
fishermen to carry loaded baskets of catch up almost 250 feet from the harbor to the village
and beyond. The local fishing industry is long gone, but the 330 steps remain, zigzagging up
the cliff, a symbol and reminder of that heritage. Nicolson, whose grandfather was one of the
last fishermen to use the harbor, has spent much of his life as the staircase's unofficial
custodian and caretaker, resisting with muscle, sweat, and a rough Caithness tongue the
destructive forces of waves, wind, and local vandals.
"I love the steps," he says, as well he might. They are a hidden
treasure of Scotland, a highlight of the North Coast 500 driving
route, and Nicolson is one of the great characters you might meet
along the way.
The North Coast 500, often described as Scotlands Route 66, is a
516-mile loop of the farthest reaches of the mainland, beginning and
ending in Inverness and taking in some of the most dramatic
landscape and seascape in the country. "Loop," though, is too pale a
word for roads that include the 12-mile, single-track Bealach na B,
Gaelic for "pass of the cattle." This most exhilarating and perhaps
even frightening driving experience is the closest thing the country
has to those steep, hairpin bends through the Swiss Alps.

Although the North Coast 500 brand is new, these roads have been around for a long time, and
there is no need to keep to the official route or visit any of the places recommended on the
website. Indeed, sticking by the rules is not the Highland way. Make the road your own.
Personalize your tour around distilleries (Old Pulteney, Glenmorangie, Dunnet Bay) or foodie
inns (Applecross Inn, Kylesku Hotel, The Caberfeidh) or ancient carved stones (Gairloch, Farr,
and Eagle stones). You dont even have to stop at these places to enjoy them. Just saying the
names is a delight. Chant them like plainsong. Roll them around in your mouth like pebbles .
Whichever way you go, clockwise or counter,
will not lack for points of interestloch after
loch after loch, broch after broch after
broch. Most of all, take time to meet the
people. Meet Lotte Glob, the Danish
ceramicist whose sculpture croft on the
western shore of Loch Eriboll is a fairy-tale
blend of art and nature. Meet John
Morrison: The ferryman at Cape Wrath for
the past 33 years is known as "Carbreck" after the croft where he grew up, a cottage he says is
haunted by his mother and a spectral wildcat, which, in life, she had made a pet.
Superstitions up here are sometimes discussed in this matter-of-fact manner. One guidebook
notes with regret that, while a mermaid used to live on the rocks off Sandwood Bay, she has not
been seen recently.
The North Coast 500 is supposed to begin and end at Inverness Castle, but I start my trip at the
site of the Battle of Culloden, a few miles east. Scotlands far north is sometimes called "the
empty lands"the huge northern county of Sutherland has a population density of around six
people per square mileand the journey is enhanced by understanding from the start why this
is so.
Culloden, fought in
1746, was the bloody
climax of the Jacobite
rising, an attempt by
Charles Edward Stuart,
Bonnie Prince
Charlie, to take the

British throne. In less than an hour, around 1,250 of his men had fallen, and in the aftermath
government forces cracked down on the Highland clan system. Tartan was banned, as was the
speaking of Gaelic, and land, crops, and cattle were seized. Culloden was a trauma that
accelerated the process of depopulation. You learn about this in the visitors center, but go
outside and you feel it. Here, beneath the moor, the dead still lie. Boulders carved with clan
namesMacGillivray, Maclean, Maclachlanmark where they fell. Visiting is sometimes
emotional for descendants. On top of the Clan Fraser stone, an unknown hand has placed a one cent piece, Lincolns profile blurred by fallen rain.
The Highlands, for all their beauty, can be a somber place; indeed, that is part of their beauty,
inseparable from it, the shadow of tragic history flattering the landscape. Allan Mackay, a
shepherd in Melness, which has views over to the Orkney Islands, senses this most intensely
when the low winter sun makes visible the contours of old farm workings. He can point to the
ruined walls where his great-great-grandmother lived as a girl before she and her family were
forced out by landowners who wanted the fields for the more profitable sheep grazing. The
clearances took place across the Highlandssometimes evictions were violent, even murderous,
sometimes not, but they have not been forgotten nor forgiven. "It was brutal," says Mackay, as
he takes a break from attending to his dogs. "It was almost ethnic cleansingand all because of
what I do, sheep farming."
There is grumbling in some parts about the popularity of the North Coast 500, worries that the
cars and visitors put too much pressure on roads and infrastructure. Many drivers seem to have
little idea how to behave on single-track roads, the etiquette of passing places and so on. There
is talk on the remote Applecross peninsula of holding a referendum on whether to ask to be
removed from the official map.
The trouble with assigning the route a number500
milesis that it encourages drivers to remember the
formula taught in school, distance = speed x time,
and set about testing it by flooring the accelerator.
Heres a better equation: The amount of pleasure
one takes from the Highlands is in direct proportion
to the time spent immersed in them. This, after all,
is a landscape in which time is written into the very
rocks. The Lewisian gneiss, which comes to the
surface here, is the oldest stone in Britain. Great isolated mountains, such as Suilven, are
survivors of even greater peaks, unimaginably old, ground down by Ice Age glaciers. Speeding

along these roads seems, therefore, not quite in the proper spirit of awesome geological languor.
So do as the rocks do: Take it slow.
Not so slow, however, that you miss the chance to eat at La Mirage, a restaurant that brings a
little bit of Vegas to the rather gray village of Helmsdale. The cook is Don Sinclair. At 62, he is
in looks and manner reminiscent of Truman Capote, and on the day I visit hes wearing a shirt
covered in pictures of Marilyn Monroe. The gold chain around his neck secures a large ring
engraved with a marijuana leaf. This belonged to his late mother, Nancy, as did La Mirage in the
old days. Don believes in generous portions; one checks the haddock for evidence of a harpoon.
He also runs a guesthouse, Shangri-La, unlike any other in the Highlands. One bedroom is a
shrine to the blessed Marilyn, the other tricked out in the red, white, and blue of the British flag.
A guest once asked why he didnt decorate in tartan, and Don replied, incredulous, "Why would
you want a Scottish room in Scotland?" Nevertheless, as a compromise, he has hung next to the
bed a framed photograph of his mother with the former leader of Scotland, Alex Salmond, who
had popped into La Mirage for a fish supper.
In Shangri-La, we are a long wayphysically, temporally, figurativelyfrom Culloden. Yet the
common ground is a certain independence of spirit characteristic of the Scots. I discovered it all
over the North Coast 500 as I drove roads that twist through the heather like quicksilve r
trickling over velvet.
The poet Norman MacCaig knew those roads well. He knew the hills, the glens, the best places
to fish and drink, and he wrote in the 1960s that this part of Scotland attracted "people tired of
a new civilisation to taste whats left of an old one." True then, true now. The North Coast 500 is
in some ways a cynical branding of a landscape and culture that was always there. What I feel,
though, as I approach Inverness and the end of the long journey is not cynicism, and certainly
not relief, but gratitude for the experience. And something else, too: a great desire to head north
once more.