A man who lives in a Highland layby has been banned from the roads after being caught drug-driving.
Roger Alsop also had no insurance – a result, his solicitor said, of attempts to live an ‘off-grid’ life.
Alsop, 57, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit charges of drug-driving and driving without insurance.
Fiscal depute Emma MacEwan told the court that Alsop was stopped by police on Quay Street, Ullapool, on the morning of December 10 2021.
A police national computer check revealed his vehicle to be uninsured and while speaking with him officers noted the smell of cannabis.
Accused lives in ‘dismembered rear part of a campervan’
Alsop was then required to provide a sample of saliva for a roadside drug test.
“The drug wipe tested positive,” Ms MacEwan told the court.
Subsequent tests showed that Alsop had three micrograms of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, a cannabis constituent, per litre of blood, the legal limit being two micrograms.
Defence solicitor Neil Wilson said Alsop lived in the “dismembered rear part of a campervan halfway between Garve and Ullapool”.
He told the court his client, whose not guilty pleas to charges of not wearing a seatbelt, driving a vehicle that was incorrectly registered and not having the registration mark affixed were accepted by the Crown, was attempting to live “off grid”.
‘Horizons would be considerably constricted by roads ban’
He said Alsop had lived this way since selling his former home 10 years ago, adding that his client had no interest in “engaging with society”.
He said Alsop would sometimes travel from his home to the coast to pick up litter, but that his horizons would be considerably constricted by the inevitable ban that would result from his guilty plea to the drug-driving charge.
Mr Wilson said: “He was unaware that if one smokes cannabis it is still in your bloodstream the following day.”
The court heard that Alsop’s lack of insurance was simply “part of the general pattern of living off grid and below the radar”.
Sheriff Robert Frazer banned Alsop from the roads for 12 months and fined him a total of £640 pounds.