If you only stop once on the east coast, stop in Lybster

If you’ve time for just one village stop on the east coast of the North Coast 500, I’d choose Lybster. You turn off the A99 into what looks like an ordinary village street, then a few hundred yards farther on it opens out between the old stone houses and you’d think there was room for six lanes of traffic. I’ve watched a coach pull up to collect passengers and do a complete U-turn in the street. There are places where I’d think twice about trying that in a car.

The old photograph shows an ordinary road down the middle, with broad stretches of grass between the road and the houses. I’d have loved to come into Lybster when the street looked like that. There’s something rather grand about giving a village that much space, and I wish we’d kept more of it green. The Portland Hotel is at the head of the village if you fancy a meal or a night here, and the public loos are looked after by the community.

Keep going down the main street and take the right turn for the harbour. The road narrows to a single track and winds down the hillside until you can see the whole harbour below you, with the North Sea beyond. This is where I once looked down and found an Argentine flag flying over the wharf. I’ve told the story of how The Crown came to Lybster in our Film and TV section. As you carry on down, the road crosses the burn on a high stone arch, with a little waterfall in the gorge below.

I’d park outside Waterlines, the community-run café and heritage centre. The little museum upstairs tells you about the fishing, and if the weather’s with me I like to take a coffee and a slice of lemon drizzle out to one of the wooden benches, where you can watch the boats coming and going. Give yourself time to sit there a while. It’s my favourite part of the visit, and in the blogcast I’ll tell you about the day my guests and I watched the sea come over the harbour wall, and what happened when an earlier storm nearly closed the harbour altogether.

To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.