Coastal road puts nature on a plate
PEOPLE tell you the Highlands are beautiful. They opine about the whisky, the canyon-like glens, the lochs (whether they’re home to monsters or not), and warn you the weather is erratic.
The thing is, until you’ve set out along the North Coast 500 yourself, it’s hard to grasp just how beautiful it is – and just how hungry all that open sky and chilly air will make you.
A coastal road that loops up, round and down the frilly edges of the Scottish Highlands, the NC500 may wind beside beaches, cliffs, mountains, meadows, prairies and rivers, but experiencing the views wasn’t our only aim on a snowy weekend in March.
The plan? To start in Forss and follow the NC500 west to Torridon, to bookend our trip with gin and eat meals infused and flavoured by the landscape. Here’s what we learned, and tasted, on the way...
XXXXXX Built in 1810, xxxxxx Forss House Hotel is set into Xxxx springy earth, dotted with snowdrops at this time of year. A 30-minute drive from Thurso on the north coast, and a little longer from John O’Groats, there’s buttery shortbread in the room and breakfast could arguably keep you going the entire 500 highland miles.
Between John O’Groats and Thurso is Dunnet Bay Distillers, a squat one-storey building that conceals a distiller called Elizabeth and a lab, where husband-andwife team, Martin and Claire Murray, concoct their Rock Rose gin.
Process engineer Martin used to brew his own stout but, as it increasingly went undrunk, he switched to gin, and started producing Rock Rose in 2014. Strikingly bottled in ceramic (our host Anne at Forss House tells us the bottles remind her “of the old ceramic hot water bottles”), their curling, colourful labels are designed by Claire and the gin is flavoured with locally-foraged botanicals and anything they grow themselves.
Blaeberries (also known as bilberries), nettles, gorse, lemon verbena, spruce, and pineapple sage all get a look in.
Back on the road, snacks are necessary – namely Tunnock’s Tea Cakes and shortbread filched from the Forss House Hotel tea caddy. There are many places to pull up and spot stags, and to find yourself feet from the ocean, seals sunbathing below. But before summer, the NC500 is big on views and short on cafe stops.
When we do arrive at The Torridon Hotel on the western coast, having driven through snow, sleet, yolk-yellow evening sunshine and slate-like sheets of rain, we ensconce ourselves in the hotel’s whisky and gin bar.
There might be more than 365 whiskies on the menu – and it’s a wee dram that’s offered with porridge at breakfast – but everyone’s drinking the hotel’s own gin, Arcturus.
Dinner itself is inherently mysterious. We opt for the winter tasting menu (£80 per person) and instead of being told what dishes to expect, are given a list of ingredients that will appear, some foraged, some grown in the hotel kitchen garden, others courtesy of local hunters and fishermen.
Come for the views – stick around for the food.