CAPE WRATH!!

If returning to Kirkwall youth hostel was like visiting an old friend, returning to Durness was like being reunited with your best friend from school.  Liz and I took refuge there about thirty years ago in terrible weather,  while we were driving around the north in our little yellow VW Polo.   Like the school friend, it hadn't changed in character despite being a bit worse for wear.  Water is still heated by a coal-fired Aga, but the whole set-up works very well.  Before I left the warden asked if I had done my chores (she was joking).

A few people in the hostel asked where I was heading, and were a bit unimpressed when I said Scourie.  "Oh, that's not far". But they didn't realise I was taking a detour to ... (cue dramatic music) ... CAPE WRATH!! 

The top left corner of Scotland, CAPE WRATH!! is only reachable via a ferry and ten miles of rough track ... THROUGH A MILITARY FIRING RANGE !!  The sort of place that Top Gear would go to if it was about cycling.

A dozen of us were waiting for the first ferry at 9:30.  Ten minutes to cross and everyone else got on the minibus.  I hid my panniers behind an abandoned tractor and started up the very steep track, which once had some tarmac on it, and varied from poor to terrible.  The first mile had nice views over the sandy sea loch, with a lone seal doing whatever seals do on the sand.

The rest was mainly a matter of spotting rideable bits of road and trying to have some influence over steering the bike.  It was hilly but my legs were fine: my hands hurt from gripping the brakes and being jarred by potholes. It made Surrey roads look good.  If you dared to look up, the views were nothing to write home about: undulating grassy, peat land with no view of the sea after the first mile.

CAPE WRATH!! is an impressive place.   Towering cliffs plunging vertically into the sea: a few seabirds making a lot of noise far below.  I was torn between getting close to the edge to see down, and wondering how safe the ground was.  There is a lighthouse,  a big foghorn,  and ... a small café selling tea, sandwiches, bananas and chocolate bars.  I sampled them all.  After the minibus left, the café closed and I seemed to have the place to myself, but there's only so much fun you can have in a place like that, so I soon headed back.  On the return journey I saw a green canister labelled GRENADE in the verge.  I decided against bringing it home as a souvenir.   Six seals on the sand as I neared the jetty.

All in all, not great as a bike ride: unless you are compelled to ride, take the minibus.  By the way, disappointingly,  CAPE WRATH!!  is derived from Norse, meaning Turning Point.

West to Durness

It just keeps getting better. ..   After a few days when I retraced my steps southwards, today's ride took me west along almost the entire North coast of Scotland.   Last night an unexpected bonus: a performance by the Thurso Pipe Band of a dozen pipers and four drummers, in the main street just outside our hostel.  Some wee lasses gave us a demonstration of highland dancing: it proved too much for one of them who ran off back to her mum half way through.

I set off early to beat the expected rain: it was a sweltering 16 º - very humid.  Empty roads on the gently rolling Caithness countryside, and a notable absence of birds, except a few blackbirds.   Very different from Orkney just a few miles away.   A few miles on was Dounreay with the domed reactor, now being decommissioned: a few miles further still and the pretty village of Reay, presumably Up Reay.

Caithness gave way to Sutherland and the hills became more serious.
A very inviting café at Bettyhill was closed on Sundays.  And that was the only café I was aware of on the whole day, so I tightened my belt (in my mind at least) and soldiered bravely on.  I needn't have worried: there was a village shop a mile further on, and then another café, very nice but beset by midges, a bit later near Tongue.   I took a detour by the estuary and missed Tongue, which may have been the only reasonably sized place on the whole route.

The views were opening up with a whole pallette of every shade of green all around, and in the distance some real mountains were emerging from the haze.  I took another gorgeous detour down a secret valley to a little sandy beach at Skerray and wound my way back past picturesque cottages and then over undulating moorland to the main road, which became single track with passing places around here.

After a few more hills I was only four miles from Durness, my destination,  but it was the other side of a big sea loch, Loch Eriboll.  The loch is surrounded by mountains and as I cycled around its three shores a succession of views unfolded.  It has the most stunning scenery I've seen so far.

And on the gentle ascent of the west side, oh joy!  A café.   I was nearly home but the views and desire for cake compelled me to stop.  Then a gently hilly and twisty ascent: more views of beautiful hillsides and beaches with pale sand and aquamarine sea hugged by black rocks.  I was in Durness but almost wished for more miles before I had to stop.  No rain either!

The last photo Iis of Smoo Cave near Durness.   Smoo means Cave in Gaelic, so it's a sort of cave cave, as you can see. Durness Youth Hostel is at the top right.

PS It has come to my notice that the Thurso Pipe Band have an Antipodean look to them. I'll have to fix this when I get home.  Sorry.

An unexpected break in Thurso

As a result of missing the ferry to Hoy, I had a free afternoon in Thurso, which happened to be hosting the Caithness County Show.  It was very agriculture-focused,  with rows of pens of rosette-bearing sheep, cows and bulls. Impressive amounts of shiny farm machinery.

Everyone seemed to be there - young girls competing with great concentration in the highland dancing, accompanied by a teenaged boy piper in full highland dress.  Older girls leaping onto running horses in the ring and then showing every which way not to sit on a horse.  Nobody was trampled.  Exhibitions of flowers,  school art, photography, baking.  More baking. There were marquees full of  mouth-watering entries. 

The rest of Thurso is fine but it's just a town. A CTC winged wheel outside the Pentland Hotel.   In the museum,  a core from the nuclear reactor at Dounreay, surprisingly small at about 25 cm across and 1 metre high - considering it could produce enough power to supply the whole of Thurso.   I was glad to have bought my lead-lined radiation-proof underpants with me.  You never know when you might need rhem.