We had a few days wandering around Wick, taking walks along the coast to see Old Wick castle perched precariously on the cliff edge and inland along the river. We visited distillery number 11 – Old Poulteney – and spent an hour looking round the Wick Heritage Centre run by some very vigorous old ladies!

We thought Wick was quite a pleasant town with a river running through the middle. It rose to fame in the 19th century when it was Europe’s biggest herring fishing port. There are photos in the heritage centre showing hundreds of the herring boats crammed into the harbour where Emerald was now tied up on the pontoons. Thomas Telford designed the south side of the town to house the thousands of workers required to catch and process the ‘silver darlings’ as the herring were known. The streets are wide and the stone houses are impressive but it’s sad to see how many are empty. The heritage society is in a row of six houses and they are working to restore and maintain the last herring sheds and have an old herring boat the Isabella Fortuna.

The pontoons and services at the harbour are good, with free wi-fi which has been great for us having had to put up with GPRS for months now. The shower facilities are a bit tired although they were clean and certainly not the worst we’ve seen on our travels. The harbour authority had a grant to improve them but lost it. However, the welcome we received from the harbour master certainly made up for any lacking in shower facilities.

Friday 19th August
Compared to the rugged west of Scotland, the north east corner is far more gentle and rural. Travelling on the bus to John O’Groats took us past fields dotted with hay bales or with cut grass waiting to be baled. Further west the land rose slightly and became more moor-like; in the far distance we could see the distinct mountains of the north-west pointing skywards.

John O’Groats was touristy as we’d expected; what was sad was how many of the shops and craft units were closed. The signpost had been taken away due to the threat of theft and vandalism and was only on site when the photographer was present. We didn’t spend much time there; the sun was shining and the beach along the path to Duncansby Head looked very inviting. One beach was absolutely covered in shells of all shapes and sizes; it was impossible to walk along without crunching them underfoot. Then strangely, the next beach just around a rocky corner was completely bare of shells – not a single one did we find – how odd!

The sun was nice and warm now so I rolled up my trousers for a quick paddle – and it was quick as the water was freezing! I dried off in the warm sun wiggling my toes in the soft, golden sand; sitting and eating our lunch, watching the tidal rip called Hell’s Gate churn about in front of us. It was a windless, flat calm day yet there was still a good patch of white water. A yacht rocketed through with the tide on its way south.

Up on the cliff tops we admired the rugged cliff edge marked with geos – inlets with perpendicular sides - and ‘gloups’ –holes where a cave has been eroded out by the sea and the earth above fallen in, leaving a small piece of land across its seaward face. Fluffy fulmar chicks were nesting on the vertical edges of these geos pulling out lumps of fluff to reveal their adult feathers. The views across to Orkney were excellent and we could see Wideford Hill next to Kirkwall which we’d climbed up a week or so ago.

Photo: Fluffy fulmar chick

We continued on the cliff path past the lighthouse to the stacks of Duncansby, the stunning coast line dotted with caves, natural arches and bridges. Fulmars swooped around us and the sound of squawking seabirds drifted up from the sea. We took an unofficial route pack to the the bus stop across the heather and bog which wasn’t such a good idea!

Photo: The Stacks of Duncansby

On the way back to Wick we stopped off to see the Caithness Broch Centre where there is a display of artifacts discovered on archeological digs. Brochs are large stone towers built over 2000 years ago and the area we were in has the largest concentration of them in Scotland. The remains of one stands on the cliff edge in front of the Broch Centre – the problem was when we tried to see it was the cows with calves sat completely blocking our path. With reports of people being trampled by cows in the back of our mind we edged slowly towards them; one by one they got up and moved away a little allowing us to get through. We had a look around the remains of the broch and the memorial built by the excavators in the 19th century and then turned to leave – to find a cow had now wandered along the narrow path we needed to go back along! With a fence one side and a cliff edge the other we had nowhere to go and waited hoping it would come back to its friends – which finally it did!

We head off tomorrow for Peterhead with an early start – yuk!