It's day five of our North Coast 500 road trip. I'm Chelsea, he's James and that's a terrible
freeze frame. We've been doing a road trip around the top of the Scottish highlands and in this
final video of our trip we'll be visiting castles, drinking whiskey and sharing our final costs for
petrol and accommodation. Now back to the video. For once we're not in the car when we're starting
because we're already being massive tourists. Where are we James? Castle Sinclair Girnigoe.
This is what it used to look like and this is what it looks like now.
James can you tell me a fact about this castle please? I'll show you some stuff. This was his
cinema room and over there was his open plan kitchen diner. This is scaffolding,
he was also a scaffolder... the king. *Laughs*. It's quite fitting that we're starting the
day with a castle because we've had our fair share of B&Bs which we've really, really liked
however, tonight we are staying in a castle, a Scottish Castle. I'm so excited for that!
So we're about to go down the Whaligoe Steps which is where the women would go and meet their
husbands and their brothers and their sons off the boats with all the fish and they'd carry the fish
all the way up it's over 300 steps. 365. Wow. And then they'd carry it into Wick which from here,
how long did it take in the car from Wick? About 10 minutes?
At least yeah. So they used to walk all the way up the steps and into Wick. Mad.
Wow, that's scary innit.
So this is where they collect the fish so they'd be like "Roy! Lob us some halibut come on,
I'll take it to Wick, I'll get us a couple of quid for it. I don't know why that was Welsh.
And now for the climb back up.
Oh my god, I'm so unfit james. As a clumsy person it does scare the sh*t
out of me that you could just trip and fall down - please be careful if you come here.
Oh i think we need to go to a cafe to catch our breath back. There's a cafe that looks over the
steps actually, however Lisa who's B&B we stayed in last night which was lush - she recommended
a cafe just down the road in Lybster so we're going to check that out instead.
I just used Google Maps then to search for the next bit but I don't have any signal.
The reason it works is you've got to download your Google Maps before you go. This is how you do it.
That has been such a help because in so many places there's been no signal or really
crap signal - not even E - yeah no service at all so make sure you do that, that's so
important. Even if you have a sat nav in your car which we actually do, I wouldn't rely on it,
I'd have the Google Maps as a backup because often the postcodes will actually take you
to the wrong place so it's definitely worth having the visual aid of Google with you - plus it's free
Well Lisa from our airbnb recommended the crab roll, here it is. Actually very nice.
Fun fact about me, I used to have a fear of flour, genuinely, and I never would have
been able to pick up a bap like this. I've come really far, my mum and dad are very proud of me.
That's lovely. That's a lovely bap. I'm glad she recommended this, we would have no way found it.
We're at Dunrobin Castle and uh, there's some guys. I just made an arse of myself. Oh my god,
they guide you into the car park and he just put down his window and was like 'all right lads,
um is this also where the hotel is?'. No. This is - james thinks we're staying at this f*ck off
castle. After driving in I was like 'this looks nice i don't mind staying here'. What a dump.
We have arrived just in time for the falconry display which starts in five
minutes. The gardens are incredible, that's where we're going over there. These guys,
Harris hawks, live in the Americas. Northern, Central and South America is where they're from.
What are you laughing at? This one here looks like Gemma Collins.
I'm claustrophobic Darren. I fancy one of these.
Weird seeing an elephant head. Yeah. Just on the wall, how many nails are holding that up?
Pretty heavy. I love that you were worried about the engineering behind
the elephant head on the wall. Yeah. I suppose you can learn a lot about them, that's what
they used to say wasn't it? Yeah look at those museums, you could learn about the animals but
i think it's a bit weird. This castle is incredible. Kind of wasn't expecting it to be so.
James this is genuinely where you thought you were staying here.
I really enjoyed that we spent an hour and a half here. We don't spend that
long anywhere educational and we didn't even stop for a drink! That was an hour and a half
of learning. Feeling a bit peckish after our castle adventure but don't
worry we've still got um half a leftover sandwich from yesterday.
Whilst James is just parking, I'll explain why we decided to stay in a castle for our last
night because we wanted to have something a little fancy to end the trip on. This cost £135 for the
night - it includes breakfast but it is quite pricey, we could have done it for cheaper but
for us to include this plus our previous B&Bs and Airbnbs it's come in at just over £250 per
person - it's about £251 which I think is pretty decent for six nights accommodation.
Wo we decided to go all out on the last one - I think we deserve it, don't we James? Yeah. All
that really difficult driving we've - well James has had to do, i've done nothing. Let's check in
We've just been bought into the room, look how lovely it is. We're in the old part of the castle
and there's a lovely view.
That's our room there, cute terrace beer garden. I think what's going to be interesting is how we
find this in terms of value because this is £135 for the night including breakfast however we've
been spending like £70, £80 and getting a really nice place to stay and an incredible breakfast,
the difference being we we're not going to be sat in someone's lounge, you know,
or feeling like we're encroaching on someone's personal space so I guess you
pay a bit extra for that but yeah I wonder if by tomorrow when we check out whether i think
i'll be a total B&B convert or I'll want to stick to hotels in the future. Another reason we've
chosen to check into a hotel tonight is the fact that Scotland is very well known for its whiskies
but with James driving, he hasn't really been able to sample many at all and this place is very
well known for its whisky bar so it meant that we could come park the car and James has got time to
to test out a few so I think we'll do that next after maybe just a little nap.
Are you bored of the beach yet? We've been to a lot of beaches.
I'm hungry. That means he's bored of the beach
This looks really nice, James. So a starter is £12 and main is £32 and £39
and dessert between £10, £12. Fancy. It's posh. Let's go to the pub. Oh there's that one
This looks nice. Really annoyed because Luigi's looked really nice. And um, what's up,
where are we back at? We went back into the place and said do you know
who we are and she said 'oh sorry here's a table for you, the prime one outside
next to all the traffic'. We said 'can we sit outside no one sat here?' she said sure.
I feel like places like that place there and the fancy place we walked past before just show that
there's some money here, slash they've got the golf course. Feels like there's a lot of golfers
in the area. Uh, a lot of people in there were American golfers. Yeah they were actually.
Yeah apart from us, we stick out like a sore thumb and that's why they put us outside.
We're gonna now finally, go back to the hotel James and try some whiskeys. It's called exotic.
He was like 'you might need some water in that'. I do.
Good morning. The last you saw of us James was necking the whisky's - how did that go James?
Well, I did not get wasted. What a shocker. We had a bottle of wine - yeah - and a couple of
whiskies - yeah so can you believe it we didn't get wasted, not a super wild night. Well done us,
but we cut off because there wasn't much going on and we are now back on the road. I thought
we'd check in about the hotel because at £135 it was almost three times the price of the previous
airbnb that we stayed in so was it worth it? What do you think? Well we stayed in the castle which
is kind of cool really cool and we had a nanma nap which we wouldn't have felt comfortable doing
in someone's house. Yeah, that's true, we did around four o'clock, we had a bit of a asleep
which was less yeah. But apart from that it was nice but yeah, you could have done the same
in a B&B. I guess, to be honest, I think because it's a road trip you are getting out there and
you're doing so much that you don't really need to be based at a hotel. The breakfast was all
right actually, the selection was good although we did have some nice food yesterday. Yeah,
I mean, we got to stay in Dornoch which was nice and a cute little pretty village
but yeah, just keep it in mind. Personally, I think stick with B&Bs. Right, where to next?
We are actually gonna go on a whisky tasting tour but we'll just sample one whisky because james
has got to drive obviously but we've just filled up at the petrol station and we are going to be
getting to the end of our road trip today which is very sad but once we've done the whisky tasting,
we'll go back to Inverness and we will give you a summary of what we thought of the whole thing.
We're actually a bit early for the whisky tasting so we thought we'd go down the road
10 minutes to some waterfalls, but good opportunity to tell you about
'skin so soft'. Midges are dead annoying and they'll bite you to bits so you can use deet
mosquito repellent, all that kind of stuff, but this is like the natural version and has
been working for us so far. This is the night that we didn't wear any of this. I had a few
and they've been bloody itchy, they only just stopped itching today and that was probably like
four days ago so we're gonna lather ourselves on this, go to the waterfall and then do whisky.
There are loads of distilleries that you can visit and a lot of them have these hour tours
that cost between five and ten pounds. We've chosen to come to Glen Ord Distillery - we only
rang up yesterday and called and said 'you have a space?' and they had loads so that was good.
Here at Glen Ord we make a whisky that's called the singleton of Glen Ord.
Look how big they are they go all the way down. Because there's been a drought in Scotland,
the machines aren't on which means we can actually film and take photos in here - normally you can't
because the spark could start an explosion. What did you just do? I just took a photo off
when I wasn't supposed to. What could have happened? I could have blown everyone up so
everyone was looking at me going like - why's everyone looking at me? Idiot.
There are no rules for drinking whisky, just enjoy! So this is the end of the tour guys,
I hope you enjoyed it, if you did please go to tripadvisor, my name is Hazel.
Look where we are - Inverness! At the castle, yeah. We are back kind of where we started and
that is the end of the North Coast 500 trip. For us, how did you find it? I loved it yeah it's been
really really good. I like driving. Yeah, I like sitting and being a passenger. Oh it's bright,
I might pop these on. You may have seen from our videos that we've been in a very
nice car - we've got a beautiful car for the entire trip - however it doesn't mean that it was
a bigger engine, 2.5 litres wasn't it? Yeah. So it meant that our petrol consumption was higher.
So to take us through those numbers James, go on. Well I reckon we spent about £140 on petrol across
the whole trip but we've done some extra journeys as well not just - yeah i think we've done a few
more miles than just the the mere 500.Just the 500 would have probably been about £100 in petrol.
And what about if it was like a 1.2 litre engine? If, yeah, because we the car that we were driving
was quite powerful but a smaller engine car, it'd probably be around £65/£70 for the entire
500 mile trip. We absolutely loved it and it was so nice to finally go on holiday in the UK,
put some of our tourist money back into our own economy -Scotch economy. Scotch economy! We're
more than happy to put it in there. I think it's a great option if you are looking for a
cheap holiday that's full of things you can do for free - it's really good for that isn't it? But
that's it, that's everything from our trip across the North Coast of Scotland. Thank you so much
for watching the videos. If you haven't seen other ones you can go back and watch them now but yeah,
please hit subscribe, makes me very happy. Like, thumbs up, leave me a comment - would you like to
do it yourself? But that's it for now until our next trip. Where'd you fancy James? Next trip
to drive back to London. I mean, you gotta do that anyway. Easily pleased. All right see you soon.