![\"Polestar](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1756146075_445_960x0.jpg\")
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View of Scottish mountains and a loch from the windows of a Polestar electric car.<\/p>\n
CARLTON REID<\/p>\n
Cell phone reception in the Scottish Highlands is patchy at best, making this rugged backcountry perfect for a digital detox. But we\u2019re in an electric car, and the last thing anybody wants when driving such an advanced bit of kit is tech spottiness. There\u2019s little need to worry on this front: multi-year grant funding<\/a> from the Scottish government means there are fast EV chargers dotted throughout the Highlands, essentially eliminating range anxiety.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s on the honeypot routes, such as the exceptionally popular North Coast 500, the 21-year-old circular scenic road route beginning and ending at Inverness Castle.<\/p>\n Instead of taking that particular high road, we journeyed with our rental EV along a much less traveled, but historically more resonant, low road. This is thought to be the likely processional route of the medieval kings of Scotland on their final journey from Scone Abbey to burial on the island of Iona<\/a>, cradle of Celtic Christianity. The 100-mile Road of the Kings runs in part through Glen Lonan with views over to the pyramidical peak of Ben Cruachan and its similarly pointy lower siblings.<\/p>\n Left: Polestar 4 at the Kilchrenan Inn. Bottom right: three couples park their cars close to the Ballygowan farmhouse on the Inverlonan estate in Scotland.<\/p>\n CARLTON REID<\/p>\n Less prosaically, the single-track road through this little traveled glen is designated C32 by officialdom<\/a>, a bland description not seen on the ground or known to many locals.<\/p>\n We were heading to Inverlonan<\/a>, home to three upscale bothies with no EV charging points anywhere near. In fact, there is no electricity at all. The luxury bothies are not hooked up to the National Grid, there\u2019s no running water, and visiting the outdoor compost toilet (each bothy has a detached sentry-post hut with a killer view when the door is open, which, in the boondocks, can be almost always) requires the throw of sawdust rather than a flush.<\/p>\n A digital detox on stilts, then.<\/p>\n Inverlonan’s neolithic stone circle and standing pillar.<\/p>\n CARLTON REID<\/p>\n We were in a Polestar 4<\/a>, a large and luxurious electric coup\u00e9. Starting in Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England, we had a journey of 240 miles to reach the Road of the Kings and our bothy. Would we have enough power to survive a long-distance EV journey to this particular off-the-beaten-track highway?<\/p>\n Yes. And it\u2019s partly because of that governmental grant funding of a charging network. Since 2011, the Scottish Government has ploughed over $87 million into Scotland\u2019s public charging network and not just in cities or beside motorways but also in rural and island communities. Scotland met its target for 6,000 public charge points in October 2024, two years ahead of the 2026 target. (In the US, there are now nearly 12,000 fast-charging stations, according to EV-charging data platform Paren<\/a>. By 2030, there will be three times as many.)<\/p>\n The private sector is now expected to take on responsibility for investing in and operating Scotland\u2019s public charging network. Public charging station provider Gridserve<\/a> has 68 bays in Scotland. The company recently partnered with home charger network Easee<\/a> to survey public attitudes to EV charging\u2014this collaboration reveals that 62% of respondents declared themselves more confident in taking an EV on a 300-mile-plus journey than they would have been five years ago. With longer-range cars now more common, range anxiety is becoming a thing of the past.<\/p>\n Charging<\/p>\n Theoretically, with the Polestar 4\u2019s official range of 385 miles, we could do the five-hour trip from Newcastle to near Oban without stopping.<\/p>\n Could, but didn\u2019t. Rather than depleting the battery to naught, we topped up en route, stopping first at a motorway service station where we plugged into an expensive but superfast charger. Charging an EV at home is often free for us, or at worst, cheap as chips. Throughout the day, we can charge for zilch from solar panels on our roof, and after midnight, we benefit from an inexpensive, EV-specific electricity tariff that can fill our EV for peanuts. On the road, costs are higher, with steep prices for ultra-fast charging. Still a lot cheaper than paying for dinosaur juice, mind.<\/p>\n Our bothy overlooked Loch Nell.<\/p>\n Carlton Reid<\/p>\n Breaking our journey for an overnight at the Kilchrenan Inn<\/a>, a converted 18th-century trading post close to the shores of the aptly-named Loch Awe, we were within easy reach, the following morning, of Oban\u2019s many EV charging stations, where we topped up the battery before heading to Iverlonan via the Road of the Kings. (Topped up to 80% capacity, that is: charging slows between 80% and 100% to protect batteries, so, with plentiful charging stations, there\u2019s little incentive to fill to capacity.)<\/p>\n One of Inverlonan’s bothies perched over Loch Nell.<\/p>\n CARLTON REID There isn\u2019t a canonical \u201ccoffin route\u201d of Scottish kings from Scone to Iona via Oban, but it\u2019s entirely plausible that what would have once been a dirt track through Glen Lonan would have been part of such a medieval journey. This is because the now asphalted road that wends its way through the glen bisects an ancient ritual landscape dotted with meaning. In this ritual landscape, groups of people would have gathered to celebrate special events and to conduct ceremonies. The road was a notable thoroughfare thousands of years before early Christians trod the same route. Close to the road are ancient chambered cairns<\/a>; Iron Age hillforts known in Scottish Gaelic as duns; the Neolithic Strontoiller stone circle<\/a> adjacent to the 13ft Clach Na Caraig standing pillar; Neolithic cup-marked rocks; and two tiny artificial islands known as crannogs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chef Tim Kensett cooks in a lean-to beside a byre for three couples. The 500-year-old byre is the original Ballygowan farmhouse.<\/p>\n CARLTON REID<\/p>\n The crannogs are on Loch Nell, a tranquil inland loch, and some argue<\/a> they could have been constructed as solar observation sites. Most scholars consider crannogs to have been built, used, and reused from the Late Bronze Age to the medieval period. Still, the origins of some<\/a> could lie 3,000 years earlier than previously thought, in the Neolithic, the period when farming, pottery, and burial monuments first arrived in Scotland. Over 400 crannog sites are recorded, with many more no doubt lying undetected. There\u2019s a possible third crannog on Loch Nell, today submerged.<\/p>\n It\u2019s often claimed that 48 Scottish kings and numerous others from Norway, Ireland, and France are buried on Iona; Shakespeare\u2019s Duncan and Macbeth among them. The east-to-west processional from Scone, near Perth, to Oban would have been a journey of about 100 miles and would have involved a great deal of privation.<\/p>\n The lean-to attached to the Ballygowan byre; chef Tim Kensett prepares local food, much of it foraged.<\/p>\n CARLTON REID<\/p>\n Naturally, it\u2019s somewhat easier today, especially in a luxury vehicle. And the luxury continues once we\u2019re on the Inverlonan estate, which operates the Inverlonan bothies.<\/p>\n Bothies are usually stark stone shelters, with little in the way of amenities, located in remote places where hikers, cyclists, and mountaineers need to stay the night. According to the Mountain Bothies Association<\/a> (MBA), which lists 100 or so bothies throughout the UK, but mainly in Scotland, a bothy was \u201coriginally farm accommodation for itinerant workers.\u201d Now, continues the definition, a bothy is an \u201copen shelter usually in a remote location where travellers might have need of four walls and a roof.\u201d<\/p>\n MBA bothies are free to use. Inverlonan\u2019s bothies are purpose-built, architect-designed, made-in-Scotland, and cost $337 per night. They are upscale huts rather than MBA-style bothies.<\/p>\n Tiny’s Cairn overlooks Loch Nell. It was built as a tribute to Lupi Moll’s wife, Tiny, who died 13 years ago from cancer. Lupi owns the Inverlonan estate.<\/p>\n CARLTON REID<\/p>\n
\nLandscape view<\/p>\n