Inverness to Applecross
The opening stage leaves the only real city on the route and ends in one of the most physically isolated villages in mainland Britain — reachable, until a 1976 pass road was built further round the coast, only by sea or on foot over the hill.
The road out of Inverness
Most NC500 drivers leave Inverness on the A9 and cross the Kessock Bridge onto the Black Isle before turning west, rejoining the loop near Muir of Ord and Contin. This is the least dramatic hour of the whole trip and it's worth treating it that way — a fuel stop, a supermarket shop for the week, and a reasonably fast road before the single-track sections start properly past Achnasheen.
The junction to watch for is at Kinlochewe: continue straight and you head for Gairloch (stage 2's road); turn south here for Torridon and Shieldaig, which is the way to Applecross for this stage.
Torridon: the sandstone giants
Liathach and Beinn Eighe rise almost straight from the loch shore around Torridon village — both built from Torridonian sandstone estimated at roughly 750 million years old, among the oldest exposed rock in Europe, capped in places with paler quartzite that can look like snow even in summer. You don't need to be a hillwalker to feel the scale of them: the A896 runs directly beneath both peaks, and the short walk from the Torridon Countryside Centre car park up to the Ling Hut viewpoint gives a genuine sense of the ridge line without committing to a full mountain day.
Shieldaig, a small row of white houses on the loch shore just past Torridon, is a sensible lunch stop before the climb ahead — there's little in the way of services again until Applecross itself.
The Bealach na Bà climb
The road signed for Applecross via the Bealach na Bà ("Pass of the Cattle") is the third-highest road in Scotland and the steepest continuous climb in the UK — from sea level at the junction near Tornapress it gains around 626 m over roughly 9 km, with a run of tight hairpins near the top and gradients touching 20% in places. A warning sign partway up states the road is not advised for learner drivers, and large vehicles and caravans are explicitly prohibited past the first mile.
If you're in anything long, wide, or towing
There's a lower, longer alternative: continue past Tornapress on the coast road via Shieldaig and Kenmore instead of turning onto the Bealach. It adds distance and time but avoids the pass entirely — genuinely the right call for a motorhome, not a failure of nerve.
At the summit car park, the view stretches to Skye and the Cuillin on a clear day; cloud sits on the pass often enough that it's worth having a plan B photo stop lower down, in case the top is socked in when you arrive.
Applecross
The village at the bottom of the descent was, before the pass road opened in 1976, reachable by vehicle only via a much longer coastal route or not at all in poor weather — it's still one of the more remote settled places on the mainland. The Applecross Inn, right on the shore looking across to Raasay and Skye, is the obvious dinner stop and does a genuinely well-regarded seafood menu; book ahead in summer, it's a small building and it's often full.
Where to stay
Applecross itself has limited beds for its popularity — a campsite, the Inn's own rooms, and a handful of B&Bs, most of which fill up well ahead in July and August. Torridon and Shieldaig, earlier on the stage, have more options if you'd rather split the day and tackle the Bealach fresh in the morning with better odds of a clear summit.