NC 500 by Pauline Smith (aka Polly) trip Aug 2019

Last August Mark and I rode the NC500 on our Harleys. It was an amazing experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is considering it. And for anyone that is, here are some tips on what NOT to do!

1. Do not ride up the back of your husband’s bike whilst waiting to pull out of a petrol station in Elgin on the first day of your NC500 trip. You will drop your bike and fall off, badly bruising your leg and denting your confidence, and far more tragically, denting the petrol tank on your pride and joy, in my case the little red sportster.

2. When putting your sat nav on the bike ready for a day riding round mainland Orkney, make sure it is securely in place, otherwise 2 minutes up the road you will see it fall off, bounce twice across the tarmac and into the grass verge. You’ll think you’ll remember exactly where it landed in the long grass…but you won’t. If you’re lucky there won’t be any cars behind you, so you’ll pull over and go to where you think it is but you and your not very impressed husband will spend the next 20 minutes in the pouring rain searching for it. Just when your husband is muttering that we aren’t going to find it and we should give up (and you’re thinking that you paid 250 quid for it and you’re not leaving without it as it’s got to be there somewhere…) two scrap metal dealers from Glasgow will stop and offer to help. Within 10 minutes one of them will find it. He will be your hero for the day. Luckily your sat nav will survive it’s game of hide & seek in the long grass with barely a scratch.

3. When stopping your bike to look for said sat nav always remember to switch your ignition off, otherwise your 10 year old battery will be dead (again) (note to self: it really is time to buy a new battery now).
Luckily you will be at the top of a hill but unluckily, when your husband says to you ‘you’re going to have to push me down the hill on it’ you will have a flash back to one early morning back in May and so you will be slightly traumatised and unable to push to the required standard. Your husband will not be impressed. Again. But eventually, with chin up, you will be able to push hard enough to get the little red sportster moving and it will start, the rain will stop and you will continue on your Scottish adventure.
However, on another day you will come face to face with a French man in a camper van on one of the many narrow stretches of the NC500….but that will be a story for your husband to tell….
Polly