Day 1: John O’Groats to Keiss Castle
? 22km
? 363m
We woke early at our favourite Inverness overnight stop off place, the Black Isle Brewery & Bunk Room. We showered for the final time in a while and walked the 3 minutes to the train station, sad there was no coffee to be had but excited to board the 07:00 train to Wick.
The four and a half hour journey was spent ticking off the last of the life admin jobs, ensuring everything was charged and downloaded and I finished my book just in time.
We took a taxi the last few miles up to Lands End and enjoyed lunch at the Northern Point Café. After the mandatory photos at the John O’Groats sign we joined the coastal path and started walking.
The weather was kind but the terrain underfoot was not and a few miles in I immediately regretted not wearing my SealSkinz waterproof socks as there were some pretty soggy boggy sections. The Geo’s (a long, narrow, steep-sided cleft formed by erosion in coastal cliffs) although frustrating to navigate at times as you have to come quite far inland to then go back out again, were gorgeous with beautiful flowers growing and thousands of birds nesting in them.
We very simply kept the sea on our left and made our way towards Keiss. We crossed a gorgeous white sandy beach with turquoise blue water, and Tom could not resist a cheeky dip. We met a couple of gentlemen on our walk along the rest of the beach but apart from that it was deserted. We continued on to Keiss and camped just after the ruined castle but before the little harbour.
The first night in the tent is never a good sleep despite the beautiful location but it was a nice feeling to be back on the trail.
Day 2: Keiss Castle to Talbech Farm
? 33km
? 259m
We rose early to get some easy miles in, the first part of the day’s trail was down a quiet country road, we then tackled the first marshy bog of the trip navigating through about 3km of marshy pond land; it’s safe to say the waterproof socks were on. We then continued through to Watten and were disappointed that the Brown Trout pub was not open until 5pm, but we stocked up on water and Tom’s worries that we were going to run out of food meant he also came out of The General Store with ham and rolls for lunch. We spoke to a lovely local gentleman who must have been in his 80s and had moved to the area 15 or so years ago.
It just started to rain so we made a move out of the village but not before we used the PC. ? We followed the river out and were supposed to join a forestry area where we were hoping to camp but sadly a huge area of the forest had been felled and in its place were huge wind turbines so instead we walked for several boring kilometres through a wind farm.
The rain was on and off and we started to worry about finding a suitable place to camp, but as always a spot always turns up so we pitched up in the rain next door to the sheep and the sound of the wind turbines not really in the distance.
Day 3: Talbech Farm to Dalnawillian Lodge
? 26km
? 307m
We left a bit later from camp today but still in the rain, we needed to cross the river but it had swollen to high levels so we made our way up the road to the farm house to take their bridge over the river. Here we met the farmer and his son who were very friendly and pointed out the bridge we were after, they were the first to guess we were going all the way to Lands End, thought we were mad, apologised for the wet May weather and wished us luck.
We followed the river before joining a track and walked along the grassy and beautifully wide marked track through a quarry and before rejoining the river. We bumped into some anglers who were scouting out some good spots to fish, ate our lunch of peanut butter wraps in a small car park in-between rain showers and filled up on and filtered water from a nearby stream. The final section of the day was along an estate road, it was relatively easy going so we tried to get some distance in. We passed several very remote cottages to rent and spotted our first herd of deer. We settled to camp high above the river next to an abandoned lodge, it was quite eerie but a perfect sheltered camp spot. The lambs were not too impressed we had pinched their spot but we enjoyed a dry evening with a great view. The temperature plummeted in the night to 0⁰C so a few extra layers were put on early in the morning.
Leave a Reply