Well done, and I see you have a black mk1, same here. We are looking to go some time between mid May and mid June want to miss the midges
Yes a black mk1 and we love it we’re not going untill first couple of weeks in September so we’ll be interested to here about your trip.if you want to pm me your email address i can drop you some information that we have collected so far
Ben
Hi Fanfaefinick
I have sent you a PM.
Anything else you need to know about the NC500 - just ask.
Will do, be in touch this evening thanks.
I’ve done quite a lot of driving up in the North West / North Coast of Scotland.
Happy to chat about it with you, but maybe better via PM 
I was looking at doing that route this year as well, looks like it will be jammed solid nose to tails with mx-5’s.
If you have time I would recommend you take the old military road through the Cairngorms National Park on the way there or the way back (or both!). If you head north from Blairgowrie up to Ballater and then North from there up to Grantown-on-Spey, you will find one of the best roads in the UK.
Edited for shocking spelling, ooops.
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I’ve done this from Glasgow, up the west coast (A82) spent a week in the flow country (Caithness & Sutherland) - brilliant if you like trout fishing - not so for the midges!
Came back down the east coast (A9).
Best part is around Loch Lomond - though I grew up a stones throw from it & now stay just outside the Trossachs - when not working in Englandshire.
Was a good few years ago & it wasn’t “branded” just roads back home! Was driving an Audi 80 Sport GTE, would be great in my MX5 - though very little room for fishing gear & wet weather & walking clothes :-/
We are doing this trip starting from Sheffield on 6th sept
A bit of a thread resurrection, but I have just returned from a tour of Scotland including the NC500 route, in total I covered 1380 miles in 6 days my newly acquired NC 2.0 sport.
I will attempt to write it up and submit it as an article in STHT.
I have to agree the roads are really nice but the midges are less friendly, although having said that I was only bitten twice.
DDouble post
I have plans on doing this next year, around May time sounds ideal to me. It’s going to be a 3 week tour of Scotland taking in this route over a few days and the OH wants to do the Outlander trail/tour (don’t ask but it’s a drama series she’s hooked on) not my thing but hey ho! we are in Scotland and it all looks very exciting, castles and houses etc.
Will be very interested in your experiences. BTW midges don’t like me, had enough trouble with them a few years ago in the Lake district, hence maybe not so bad in May and also less folk doing the tour then, hopefully.
Just driven from Stirling to shiel bridge today,
Wow! Totally stunning… top off open to glorious sunshine, through glencoe and five sisters.
The wee 5 is loving it. Keeping up with my brothers Lotus exige, mostly…
Any other 5oc’ers about to or already embarking the NC500?
Less than three weeks to go, five MX5’s heading up
Did the run a couple of weeks ago. Really quiet and no midges. Unfortunately the new 5 didn’t arrive in time so had to take the VW. We had every sort of weather from nice sunny spells to a raging blizzard at Gairloch. All I can say to anyone contemplating the run - just do it, you won’t be disappointed.
We are doing it end of May beginning of June but unlike last year we are going to start from north of Glasgow, go up the west coast, stop at Kyle of Tongue and retrace our route back down the west coast taking in the Isle of Skye for two days on the return. We did the west coast on the return last year but did not find it anywhere near as beautiful.
We’ve got ours all booked for September this year, total of 18 nights booked. We’ve booked 6 nights B&B to take in the route, hopefully it will be enough.
We start our journey from Derbyshire with a first stop near Dumfries then our journey takes us up the West side stopping for one or two nights en route to start the NC500 from Inverness clockwise. We eventually finish our Scotland tour with a two nights in Edinburgh.
We know we will need to come back to do it all again and cover more of Scotland, I think the above will only be scratching the surface and we will be wanting more.
It was me you spoke to earlier in the week with the ‘PJR’ number plate in a Soul Red ND - we were doing the NC500 clockwise over 4 days
Hi
A few of us from MEN group are heading up very end August and spending a week or so doing the route. Looking forward to it
John and Michele
Midges will be bad this year - July/August/September.
Needs a cold frosty (not snowy) winter to kill a lot of the larvae off - we had wet & mild this year so will have been very little die off, expect lots of them!
This midge forecast should be at least informative https://www.smidgeup.com/midge-forecast/
BBC Travel Show has a piece on this over the weekend or you can find it on iPlayer
Here’s the link to it http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b095zxgh/the-travel-show-190-scotland
Enjoy