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.
