The NC500, or The North Coast 500, is one of Scotland’s most famous road trips – around 830 kilometres through the northern Highlands, following the coastline and winding through mountains, small villages, beaches, cliffs and places where it’s sometimes hard to believe you’re still in the UK. The more miles I covered along this road, the more I felt as though Scotland was slowly disconnecting from the rest of the world. The landscape became increasingly rugged, wild and empty. Larger towns disappeared, the roads grew narrower, and instead of more buildings, there were cliffs, heather-covered moorland, mountains and sea. And that was when the part of the route I had…