Lovely image! It's a shame about the spotty emulsion. I wonder what caused that? I went through two boxes of the stuff, but never saw that. You got a nice even spread of developer over the negative. Something that many of mine didn't.
Andrew, New55 PN is a love/hate relationship. There are times when I get little to nothing usable on the neg, and times when I get an image full of artifacts, aberrations, and flaws. It is these that I have come to love and keeps me shooting this film.
I think the peppery texture is from the emulsion as you said. I recall the same thing happened to me with Rollei Infrared Film on a couple of 120 rolls. Since then, it's been nonexistent.
Thank you HiHo and Andrew O'Neill for your comments !
Nice photograph. These minute areas of null density in the negative are a possible inadvertent transfer of the silver to the Receiver Sheet. We have been seeing less and less of it since Summer '16.