The Sucky Thing About NC500,

I say this as a person who is not a lover of driving and just sees it as a way to get from point A to point B, but I can say from experience as well as the input of my husband, the sucky thing about the North Coast 500 isn't anything to do with the parts that have been rebuilt, or the fact that some sections may or may not have average speed cameras, or the fact that there are definitely average speed cameras on the way up there. It's not the single track roads or the parts where you see abandoned homes and businesses which clearly couldn't make it through the seasonal nature of the trip (because you don't want to risk going and hitting closed roads with snow gates across them, or the conditions when the roads are so wet you can barely see) but the fact that in the UK we aren't taught to drive, we're taught to pass a test.

This is not meant to knock driving instructors because I loved my driving instructor. She had a lot to put up with because I legitimately panicked and cried behind the wheel, more than once, but once I had passed my test people who had been driving for longer told me that now was the time to learn to drive properly, which kind of annoyed me, but I also had no idea what it meant and that kind of continued until I met my husband.

One massive difference between the pair of us is that he learnt to drive when he was seventeen, and did his pass plus and then spent the next decade and a half driving all manner of different vehicles and in different environments which have shaped the way that he drives and how good of a driver he is. He is someone who loves cars and karting etc, but he's at home behind the wheel of a car, and he swaps between our little sports car (don't get too excited, she is a shed) and our big family car with ease whereas I still put the roof down when I revere the sports car (because the rear view mirror is tiny and the roof being off means much more visibility) and scream occasionally when driving the big family car, because it's a bus in my head.

Tangent, I know...

In the UK we're taught to check our rear view mirror when we're reversing or when we join a new road, but the NC500 is a lot of time on a small number of roads, so in theory, you can get away with checking your rear view mirror, less than ten times on the whole trip unless you're looking at the view, though that might be a bit of an exaggeration. The same drive in other countries would not look anything like the same. 

Now, there are signs in a lot of places which say 'Police Notice - Allow overtaking' or words to that effect, but it comes across more as a polite notice than an instruction. You'd think that it would be pretty simple though, because all traffic travels at the same speed, but that's where it gets more complicated. The route of the NC500 is generally single track or single lanes in each direction, so cars can go one speed, vans are ten miles an hour slower, and trucks and tankers are restricted as well, but that's mainly in terms of their size and capacity to accelerate. The signs referenced above are there to try and reduce traffic - telling slower vehicles to get in a lay by or passing place and allow faster vehicles past, not to say allow people to speed (but let's face it, this isn't Formula 1 and these bozos are not the safety car!) but to stop traffic building up by playing a game of follow the leader doing forty miles an hour (at best) when the speed limit is sixty.

This problem is amplified by the number of camper vans on the NC500, which is a great way to see the route, but they are vans, so lower speed limits, difficulties accelerating, yada yada yada, and there are specific companies who rent out camper vans in the area for people to hire to do the NC500. So not only do you have camper vans coming out the wazoo, some of them are being driven worse than noobs on Christmas Day and Boxing Day when it's their first time on Grand Theft Auto...

Worse still you have people like me that never really learnt to overtake, so even if you're in a car with a decent sized engine and not dragging a caravan, half a kitchen or a tent box on the roof, have a clear shot at the road with a straight line and good visibility, you might not know how to safely get around the van or vehicle in front, let alone doing it quickly, or have the inclination to do it, because any length of time driving on the wrong side of the road feels unnatural and I don't recommend doing it whilst screaming.

The stupid thing is, it's only really small adjustments which would make it so much easier and a much more pleasant drive for everyone. If you know you're not in a "fast" vehicle, check your rear view mirror, and if there is at least one faster vehicle behind you, pull to the side, but definitely if there is a small or medium queue developing, Pull. To. The. Side. There are plenty of passing places and lay-by's for a reason and they are very well marked. If you get stuck behind someone in a "slower" vehicle and for whatever reason you won't do an overtake, Pull. To. The. Side. Or at least leave a big enough gap so someone can overtake you, come back in and then go for an overtake on the slow vehicle. There are so many ways to make overtaking easier, but it's not even the important bit. The important bit is remembering that it's not about driving like you're Billy Big Potatoes or doing something out of frustration or because you feel like you have to, but just having a bit of consideration for other drivers etc and getting out of the way occasionally. Even if you forget to check your mirror and someone has to remind you by flashing their headlights or flicking their indicators at you to get you to just move your dawdling ass, don't then flip them the bird like they're the one in the wrong (because they're not, you are). I'm looking at you Mr Peugot, and I don't give a stuff if it was a rental.

Before anyone thinks it was something where we should have just put up or shut up, it was about fourteen miles of single track road with multiple passing places, where we were car number one in the queue behind them and by the time they pulled over and flipped the bird, there were twelve cars in the queue. Naturally that queue of twelve was only going to get longer the longer time it went on for, and this is on one of their less busy roads. One of the other vehicles in that line was a recovery truck. Yes, the NC500 isn't a race track - it's not like going to the Nurberg ring and trying to post the fastest time your vehicle can do or the fastest time you can manage, but there's a difference between a road trip at a reasonable speed where you see the sights of the edges of mainland Scotland and driving around in an ever extending queue which then takes an age to clear when the blocker gets out of the way. On the A9 on the way back we saw a wide vehicle which was either a large farm vehicle or part of the dualling works which are going on to try and reduce some of these problems and there was over a hundred and fifty cars already in a queue (and yes, we did count, like it was football passes during a screening of The Room) behind it with no chance of passing for a significant section of road. That is obviously more complicated because being a wider vehicle the options for being able to pull over and allow other vehicles to pass safely, but in that queue were multiple coaches, buses, lorries, vans and camper vans, so even if the schedule and the road allowed this vehicle to pull over, there would be additional issues, and I don't want to think about the amount of time added to the journeys of those joining the back of that queue. 

Thinking About Cars,

I can't remember if I've written before that I was thinking about getting a new (to me) car which I think would suit me better with all of the climbing and camping I like to do, and am hoping to do more of, as well as the paddle boarding that I've been doing, because it would better accommodate my board and the rest of the stuff I bring with me. 

Sadly I made the decision not to change my car, because I looked at the cost of insuring the car that I want to get instead of my current car, and honestly, the price was astronomical. The cost of insuring it for one year was something like a quarter of the sale price of the car and more than double the cost of the insurance of my current car. When I first decided not to have the new(er) car I was really disappointed and thought about it in terms of being 'stuck' with my current car, but for one thing I know that is really ungrateful because I'm lucky to have a good, steady and reliable car that doesn't cost me much in tax and fuel, even if the insurance is ridiculous.

I've been told by other people before that you will always miss your first car, and I think that's definitely going to be true of mine when she has to go, because as much as I want a bigger one and the car I have isn't what I would have chosen had I really sat and thought about it, it was only when I was speaking to someone else about learning to drive and about first cars that I realised the one I have is actually pretty great.

For a first car, it was a bit expensive, but not really especially not given the fact there was only thirty odd thousand miles on it, it had a full service history and it was little, which was what I wanted. It also was only up the road, which was a good thing, though it wasn't me that drove it home the first time. I did have to take it back for a couple of little issues and the fact it was so close was a blessing at those times. It's sturdy, which is good since someone intentionally reversed into me in a car park, and thankfully it did no damage, and I've scrapped it into a bush more than once, because country lanes are not my friend, but the damage to it has always been pretty minimal. I love the body of the car, because closing the door doesn't sound like slamming a lunch box shut, but at the same time, I always knew it was likely to get a little bit banged up, because it was my first car and I was sure I was going to prang it off of something. I'm actually quite proud of myself because I've been a lot better with it than I thought.

As much as my car being a Kia means it's solidly built and it's pretty ace, there are things I want in a new car, such as heated seats and cruise control, which I think having driven for a few years without you are likely to start to want to get, but there is something almost like a rite of passage of driving a slightly crap car for the first couple of years you spend driving. I guess it's partly because of the risk of bumping into things and also whilst you live up to the saying of, you've passed your test, so now you can learn to drive. I'm likely to keep hold of this car for another couple of years whilst I save more towards buying a newer car and also whilst I wait for my insurance price to go down a bit, but honestly, I'm dreading that the car will develop some sort of fatal fault before I am actually ready to replace it.

I guess this is the reason I wish I had learnt to drive before I moved to London though, instead of waiting until I moved back. As much as I'm at the age where people enjoy cheaper car insurance (given I could have been driving for about thirteen years by now) I've only actually been driving for two years, and in that time had a no fault accident because someone chose to hit my car. (And it was a choice.) I realise you can't go back and change these things, and there is no sense regretting things you can't change, but man, I kick myself daily about this one. 

What To Do Now,

If you're one of the people that follows this blog, you'll know that a question I have been almost obsessed by recently is what to do now. It's something that I have barely been able to get off of my head recently and I find it really difficult to deal with sometimes, because it's a very frustrating question. 

I can't remember if I have previously made mention of the fact that I have gone back to having driving lessons after a four year hiatus. It's something that I wish I had done earlier because of all the times it would have come in useful, but I'm doing it now. What's more, I even have my theory test booked this time. Granted I did something potentially stupid and booked it in the middle of NaNoWriMo. Do I really want to be attempting practices tests at the same time as writing a novel? Well, no, probably not, but I do want to be able to get this stuff done with as soon as possible, which means getting the theory test done as soon as possible. 

I've been thinking quite a lot about NaNo, and I'm still not sure what I'm going to write. Every project that I want to write at the moment I'm already a good way into and I'm a bit sick of starting things and not finishing them. Also, even if I could think of a project that I wanted to continue for NaNo, I would then have to leave it alone until next Sunday. I would be sat here with a serious itch and my mind going mad trying not to touch it. I can't even distract myself with something else because to then be able to put that down for the whole of NaNo, which I would have to do if I was going to entertain any hopes of finishing, that would be almost impossible, too. 

As if finding a project wasn't bad enough, I also get the joys of debating the pros and cons of typing and writing, and using my quills or one or more of my typewriters. Writing, I can carry everything with me, which is something I have grown a lot more used to, however, aiming for the 15k day as I want to, I can't do that without typing. 

Maybe it's a little ambitious - It's been almost two years since my last competition. I mean, yes, I wrote my dissertation last year, and by the results I got, I kinda smashed it, but that's 9,000 words of fact and research and argument, not 50,000 words of imagination. I also didn't write that whole thing in one day - but I know that some people do. It's been a while since I sat down and really hammered through a novel and to be honest, the prospect of doing it again is pretty terrifying, but not doing it, that seems worse. Worst of all is the idea of making an attempt at it, and then falling on my ass. I like my record of only one loss. 

Right now, I'm trying to think of what I need to do between now and Sunday. Most important of which would be buying a toaster. And doing a Lidl run for excessive amounts of junk food, because one of the key features of writing a novel is gaining weight in the process. For some reason though, I'm more crisps and cream cheese than tons of chocolate. Tons of chocolate makes me ill, and that's not productive. 


I know that I'm over thinking it, as I do with a lot of things, and novels are something that happen when I don't over think, but Christ almighty, I have missed this so much. Except the pre-NaNo illness that always happens. That sucks ass. For now, it's just a waiting game. Roll on next weekend.