End-To-End Day 3: Rain Doesn't Stop Play

More pensive in large.
Back blip

We visited Whaligoe before the gift shop at John o'Groats opened allowing us to send the obligatories... Whaligoe was interesting: it is a natural harbour but rather inaccessible (the civil engineer Thomas Telford wrote it off as a prospect) but in the early 19th Century, Captain David Brodie cut 330 or 365 steps (depending on who you ask, and we didn't count...) down the cliff to make it accessible. Lots of signs of its use as a fishing harbour remain, including the steps themselves, remnants of fishing buildings, and patches of tar.

After posting our postcards, we set off along the north coast to the Castle of Mey (the Queen Mother's favourite residence) and Dunnet Head (the most northerly point of mainland Britain, where we saw two puffins about 5m below the cliff edge over which we were peering).

We rode along the coastal highlands to Tongue, then down along the edge of Loch Loyal and through the stunning highlands between Tongue and Lairg.  The rain pounded us every which way, but only added to the stark beauty of the sea-, land-, and lake-/loch-scapes through which we were adventuring. I was just blown away by the scenes that we took in and sights that we saw. *Sigh*

Bleak midsummer skies
strove to soak us through and through.
Our spirits weren't damped.

We then headed for Bonar Bridge on our way south to Edinburgh via Inverness and Perth. Our evening was most civilised: we visited LadyM., JR, and Archie to catch up over a splendid supper. They'd warmed the place to help us dry off, and we had fun introducing Archie to the charms of Milwaukee Iron.

I've made a new End-to-End album on Flickr here (Day 3's pictures are right from here).