Rusty White, a van on tour

The fabled NC500 starts and finishes in Inverness. We will be driving most of it, although with a few add ons and we are not planning to go back to Inverness. It's called the most epic road trip in Scotland and one of the top 10 in the world. We shall see. Our first night on the NC500 was Top 10 for sure! The first "sight" was pretty creepy. It's called Cloothie Well, a little mound in a small forest where people come to hang pieces of clothing, cloth and shoes into the trees as part of a healing ritual. Cloothie Wells are places of pilgrimage usually found in Celtic areas. May that as it be, we found it really creepy. We stopped briefly in Dingwall to have a look around, didn't see much, so on we went to check out some waterfalls on our way to Helmsdale, a small village with an even smaller harbor. Camper vans may park up right next to it, which was very idyllic. If you don't mention the mirade of sea gulls, that is. The next day lead us past Ousdale Broch an

Before leaving Aberdeen, my human went to check out the maritime museum. For her, the two most interesting pieces were a enormous model of an oil platform, hung up from the ceiling and reaching down all four floors to almost touch the ground. And then there was a Newt Suit, still in great shape. Drill bits We drove on after lunch, planning to spend the next few days in the Cairngorm National Park, which is home to many on the UK's highest "mountains". The definition of a mountain seems to be different here than where we come from, but let's show some curtsey. Ballater is one of the bigger towns on the edges of the largest National Park the UK has to offer. So we stopped there to get some information. As we arrived it was - surprise- raining. Nothing unusual here, but we still haven't gotten quite used to this as a permanent feature.  It stopped a couple of hours later, kind of, so my human set out for a walk around the area, which is really quite pretty. Seemed a