A little over a year ago I took a trip to Scotland with my wife and her parents, where we did a road trip called the “North Coast 500” – a 500 mile long loop along the north coast of Scotland. And due to some misunderstandings regarding what license you need to bring to drive a rental car in another country, I ended up doing all of those 500 miles of driving entirely myself.
Overall, it was a surprisingly uneventful drive for me. City and highway (or “motorway”) driving was, for the most part, completely normal, with nothing notable or out of the ordinary to report – aside from the whole “driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road” thing. Generally speaking, drivers were no more or less friendly than anywhere else I’ve been, with no unusual quirks to their behavior on the road.
However, once we started to get up north into the remoter parts of Scotland, all that changed.
The bane of my existence for this road trip was the “single-track road.”
These were, as the name suggests, single-lane roads – as in, just one lane – and not one lane in each direction, mind you, but just one single lane, just wide enough for a single car (with no shoulder/breakdown lane).
Scattered at regular intervals were “passing places,” where a short section of road was paved a bit wider and you were expected to pull over to let oncoming traffic go past you or to let cars behind you pass you. Slower vehicles – like farm vehicles, or the numerous camper vans/RVs that tourists were driving – were expected to use these “passing places” regularly but of course many tourists weren’t aware of this unwritten rule, and so we did run into several absurdly long lines of traffic. These can be more than just an annoyance, though – they can be a real problem when they get too long, as you have so many cars passing which then creates a hazard for any oncoming traffic (which will have to pull over to let the long line pass them). And heaven help you if you have 2 long lines of traffic that meet up somewhere!
Locals of course were used to this style of road, but I was not… and with the great stretches of distance between towns served by often just the one single road, the locals were very clearly in a HURRY to get to where they were going… and they would ride up your ASS if you didn’t let them pass, or if you were driving too slow (which for them meant driving upwards of 60 MPH, despite the narrow and winding roads). Oh, and did I mention that despite the narrow and winding nature of the roads, because they were unsigned as to speed and considered “B” roads, the “official” speed limit was actually 60 MPH (97 KPH)? Yeah.
Oncoming traffic was no better, turning every encounter into a game of chicken: was it going to be you or the other car that pulled into the passing place? Who knows! What happens if you come around a corner and there’s oncoming traffic but no passing place? Who has to back up?
Needless to say this sort of driving began to wear on me over time… especially given that I was driving a low-to-the-ground Mercedes wagon, as opposed to the GLK SUV I’m accustomed to. Going off the pavement (which was itself often several inches above the surrounding terrain) was not an option for me, with the extremely minimal ground clearance I had at my disposal.
In some places, you’d go for miles and miles (hours of driving) on these single-track roads, and let me tell you… it gets very tiring after a while.
By the end of our 2 week trip, I was ready to never see another single-track road in my life.
Thankfully, I never had any problems… just a lot of stress. And it meant that for large portions of the trip, I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the scenery around me, because I was too focused on not driving off the edge of the narrow road we were on… which is a shame, because the bits I was able to appreciate were truly beautiful.
Overall, I’d rate driving in Scotland as:
- Generally easy and completely normal
- Like most of Europe, not designed for big cars/SUVs so try and stick to smaller vehicles if you can
- Single-track roads: avoid if at all possible
