We had dinner tonight in the carpark of Dunnet Head viewpoint, the most Northern point of UK mainland – we’ve reached the top! 🙂
This morning we left our overnight stop with a view to stopping in Helmsdale for maybe a couple of nights as our map looked like it may have a few interesting places to be. We missed the two best looking walks, which is a shame but we are cagey about leaving Willow fully loaded for any length of time while we go off walking in the wilderness, she is just too vulnerable with all our belongings in her! We stopped at a small town to empty the loo in the public toilets, refill all our water bottles and check out the local Thrift Store (two pairs of trouser for Tarly for £3 – hurrah!) and Co Op (loads of reduced to clear fruit and veg for lunch / dinner – hurrah!). We got to Helmsdale and looked at the various information points, collected some leaflets and retreated to the van for lunch. We decided against the Heritage Visitor Centre on the basis that there are so many excellent free places to see and learn we don’t need to blow most of the days budget on admission to one. We pondered our map a bit more and decided we are just biding time on the east coast really when we already know the west coast is where our hearts lie and the north coast is where we have not yet explorered so we’d head to John O Groats and stop if we see anything interesting but carry on along the top if we don’t.
That led us to Badbea which I had looked at online and was very interesting (I’ve linked to all these places on the WW blog, don’t have enough battery to do it again here), then Lybster where we started thinking about stopping for the night as it was close to 5pm but nowhere looked promising. On a whim we decided to head back to the A9 towards Thurso (north coast) as we wanted to see the Flow Country and had marked a couple of other small places of interest along that road, find somewhere to stop for the night, explore there tomorrow and then go back to the east coast towards JOG.
This proved interesting – what an amazing contrast the flow country is – so very, very flat! We saw wind farms, crofts, loads of buzzards (we’d identified birds we’d seen earlier today and knew by their colouring and flight habits were not buzzards as ospreys) but not a lot else! By then Ady was stressing about petrol and we’d not found anywhere suitable to stay overnight so we decided to head all the way to Thurso. We found a Tescos and a petrol station, called into a Co Op as they reduced a load of meat down in price (so that’s tomorrows dinner sorted 🙂 ) and then decided to head back towards JOG to find somewhere to overnight. We were very taken with Dunnet Bay – will try and be there in daytime on the way back and spend some time / get some pictures, it was stunning, but no overnight parking signs were everywhere. We then spotted a brown sign for Dunnet Head viewpoint so climbed up the steep and winding road towards that. We saw deer, Ady saw something that may or may not have been a wildcat shoot across the road and we saw two other campervans parked up in the only likely spaces along the way. At the very top we were treated to a stunning view, the lighthouse, RSPB signs about wildlife (mostly seabirds, mostly out of season now) and it being the most northern point of UK mainland, and a big yellow NO OVERNIGHT PARKING sign!
It was getting dark so we decided to pull over, park and cook and eat and then travel on to find somewhere to stop afterwards. We debated putting the bed down so at least the kids could sleep if needs be and I think in the future we may well do that but it was only 830 by the time we’d eaten, washed up and were ready to go again so they watched a film while we drove on looking.
We’ve ended up next to another campervan in a layby at Gills Bay. I have no idea what sort of view we’ll wake up to as it was totally dark by the time we arrived, although the stars are some of the most stunning I’ve seen yet. The wind is howling around us but we’re snug and cosy in Willow.