Chris picks his best...

Rooms with sea views | Food and drink spots | Beaches

There’s an empty crate in the back of the Mystery Machine. It contained my entire stock of superlatives, but after a six-day drive from Thurso to Southport, it’s exhausted.

I knew this leg of the quest for Britain’s best beaches would be special, but I was entirely unprepared for the gasp-inducing, gut-wrenching, eye-watering beauty of Scotland’s west coast, an exquisitely rugged stretch of shoreline where the dazzling sands make the beaches of the Caribbean look like motorway gravel traps.

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• Camper van man Week 4 gallery: Southport to Mumbles

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• Camper van man Week 3 gallery: John O'Groats - Southport

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• Camper van man Week 2 gallery: Skegness to John O'Groats

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• Camper van man Week 1 gallery: Southend to Skegness

Beach of the week

Chris selects his favourite beaches from his camper van man tour of the British coast

Catch of the day

Chris selects his best food and drink tips from his camper van man tour of the British coast

Rooms with sea views

Chris selects his favourite places to stay on his camper van man tour of the British Coast

• Beach of the week

Camper van man week 2: Skegness to John O'Groats

On his round-Britain coastal adventure, Chris Haslam takes in England’s windswept northeast flank, then heads for Scotland

• Camper van man week 1: Southend to Skegness

• Camper van man's tour of the British coast

Starting out in cloud-bound Thurso, I point the Mystery Machine at Strathy Point. Here, the austere Protestantism of Scotland’s northernmost shores ends and, as you wind westwards, the coast displays a Catholic flamboyance that increases in intensity until it reaches certifiable geological insanity.

The madness begins at Farr Bay — but perfect as this sheltered curve of demerara gorgeousness is, there’s something perfecter over the hill, where a single crepuscular ray lights up the empty white sands of Torrisdale Bay.

Heading west, it’s like a lucky dip where every prize is an ever more precious jewel, past Coldbackie to Traigh allt Chailg considered by many to be the most perfect beach in Scotland, to Sango Sands and Balnakeil, recommended by reader Tony Rankin. Each is a variation on a common theme — outrageous natural, deserted beauty — and each is a time bandit, capable of stealing hours and days, until you stumble, wasted with Caledonian aesthetic overload, into an Ullapool estate agency.

Before you know it, you’re running a B&B at the edge of nowhere, smoking salmon and learning the bagpipes. Readers Becky Stickland, Alan Kemp and Roger Hughes, all formerly of sound mind and employment, and now respectively a hotelier, a salmon-smoker and a bagpipe technician, can attest to the risks of overexposure.

It gets worse. Southwest of Cape Wrath, and reached only after an hour-long hike across peat bogs, is Sandwood Bay recommended by reader Sandy Watson and described by the mountaineer Hamish McInnes as “the most beautiful beach in the northern hemisphere”.

It seems an ideal spot for a night of utter loneliness — how often can you be sure that you’re four miles from the nearest humans? — but 12 Germans, a quartet of Frenchmen, and a rather irritated ex-paratrooper called Dave have all thought the same thing. I’ve brought Alan Kemp’s smoked salmon and a bottle of Laphroaig. Dave has brought a packet of Bourbon biscuits and some war stories. Neither of us realised at the time that the most beautiful beach on earth was a five-minute stroll from the car park.

Next day, I push south, weaving along silent lanes where wild lupins rise in ghostly rows like the ragged remnants of a Jacobite army, dog rose splatters the hedgerows and woodbine weighs down the air with its sticky scent. This is campervan land, roamed by the likes of Malcolm Smith, who sold his house in Bristol to buy a four-wheeled retirement home, and Barry Davies, from South Wales, whose wife, Sarah, sells heather-honey fudge from their converted army ambulance.

The Mystery Machine, a state-of- the-art Volkswagen California, always attracts attention, but these nomads are a different breed. In north London, men asked if the van had a loo (no). In Wester Ross, they ask if they can get one with a winch (probably).

At Tarbert, where the purple hills are flayed to their granite bones by seas so clear you can see the bottom at 40ft, I run out of superlatives. So I can’t really do justice to the B869, aka the Lochinver scenic route, where

I watch sea otters diving for oysters, red deer eating seaweed and a baby seal crawling ashore in the twilight at Achmelvich — thanks to reader Rory Brown for the tip-off — to creep like a selkie towards a crofter’s cottage. Nor can I properly describe the jade-tinted waters and dazzling white sands at Mellon Udrigle — as recommended by Fiona Lewis — or the secret camp site on the Blytonesque paradise of Firemore Sands, near the submarine base on Loch Ewe.

I wish I could describe the knee-trembling views of Skye and Harris from the empty beach at Redpoint, the utter solitude of Ardnamurchan’s Sanna Bay and how blue the shallows were at Camas Mor, a four-mile hike north of the inn at Melvaig. If I had the words, I’d be raving about the necklace of subtropical beaches between Morar and Arisaig — but, like I said, I’m clean out of superlatives, so book a flight to Inverness (from £48 return, with EasyJet; www.easyjet.com), rent a car from the airport (from £149 for a week, with Thrifty; 01494 751500, www.thrifty.co.uk) and come and see for yourself.

As Mrs Haslam observes while we sit awestruck in the Mystery Machine, wiping the drool from our sagging jaws as yet another staggeringly beautiful coastal vista opens before us: “I think a fortnight on the west coast could change your life.” If the sun shines, it could take even less — but don’t forget the Avon Skin-So-Soft to protect against those bloody midges.

Rumour had it that there was a beach break worth paddling out for at Machrihanish. We pursued the bait, but after a 90-mile drive down the Mull of Kintyre, all we found were flat sands and an even flatter sea. It was time to leave Scotland.

My next stop is Silloth, on the Solway Firth — something of a disappointment. From there, I follow a sorrowful 15-mile stretch of sour brown sand, washed by a gravy-coloured sea, as far as Maryport, home of the eponymous blues festival, which runs for three days from this Friday.

I’m heading to pretty St Bees at the behest of reader Phil Haslehurst, who promises a spectacular Solway sunset, but the weather fails to oblige. On to Morecambe, where pink-shirted salesmen in shades are drinking champagne on the terrace of the Midland hotel, a superbly revamped art-deco outpost, bringing a ray of hope to the impoverished resort.

Blackpool seems to have let herself go since my last visit.

Too many chips and alcopops, I reckon. I join a queue at the stage door of the Grand Theatre as the curtain comes down on Joseph and ask a girl with black-and-white teeth what we’re waiting for. “Craig,” she replies. I must look stupid. “Craig,” she repeats. “Him off that thing on the telly with that other fella on it.” Oh. That Craig.

I end the week in Southport with 1,209 miles on the clock. The Victorian resort, once home to Napoleon III, is undergoing a renaissance, say developers, with the building of a “leisure complex” and a seafront hotel. “Come back in five years,” advises pensioner Walt, hugging a Thermos of whisky-laced tea in a shelter on the pier, “and I’ll make you a cuppa.” It would be a pleasure.

For more information on the beaches of west Scotland, go to www.visitscotland.com; for the best of England’s coast, visit www.enjoyengland.com/seaside

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