the end
DAY 65 Land’s End to John O’Groats
Distance: 25km
Cumulative distance: 1721km
I formulated a little plan this morning so I wouldn’t have to take the A road all the way to the finish. For about three-quarters of the way to John O’Groats I’d stay on the A99 until I made it to Freswick, then I would turn off, walk all the way down to the coast, come around Duncansby Head and enter John O’Groats from the east. It would all be time dependent of course – I had a train in Thurso to catch at around 4.30pm which would take me back to the farm, so I was determined to finish the walk by about 2.30pm today which I figured would give me enough time to do a few things at John O’Groats, and find myself a ride to the train station (roughly 20 miles further west). To finish by 2.30pm would mean I’d want to set a decent clip, so I walked past Wick Harbour again and through the rest of town, ducked into a supermarket for one final supply run, and then I was off.
Mum and Dad gave me a call in their new roles as proud grandparents, and it was good to chat as always. Unfortunately the traffic was coming past me at a fairly consistent rate so it was a bit difficult to hear but we were able to have a bit of a chat.
The walking itself wasn’t overly inspiring. There was enough of a verge on both sides of the road to allow me a safe enough passage. At Reiss the A99 turned off to the right and followed the curves of Sinclair’s Bay which gouged out the Caithness coastline. That involved crossing the River of Wester and seeing an abandoned railway line, which was about the highlight of this stretch. At the northern end of the bay was a place called Keiss and the main street seemed pretty long even though the town consisted of about two blocks. I stopped for a quick feed just past town given there was no cafe as I’d been hoping, and pressed on past some road works, past Keiss Castle to my right and through a tiny place called Nybster.
I still couldn’t see John O’Groats, there was one little hill between me and the finish line, but I kept scanning the water out to my right looking for a suitable way down to the bay. I had a little problem though – by now it was closing in on 1pm, and after consulting my map I realised the path around Duncansby Head was going to add several miles to the walk. At Freswick I sat under an old bus shelter for five minutes and considered my options. It was 1.30pm and if I went the long way I’d be in real danger of missing the train from Thurso. Bugger it, I thought, I’ll use the road to finish her off. It was going to mean an entire day of road walking to finish what had otherwise been a fascinating adventure, but it was a means towards an end and didn’t bother me too much.
From Freswick the road began to climb up that gentle hill I was describing, and on top of that I was surrounded by boggy peatland stretching far off in every direction. Scotland possesses the largest expanse of bogland in all of Europe, an area called the Flow Country which stretches across Caithness and Sutherland, and I think I was experiencing this now. It was beautiful in its own way, and made even better soon after when the north coast opened up in front of me and I could see down to John O’Groats. I’d been here once before en route to the Orkney Isles, and I’ve got to say – from what I remember, it wasn’t much to write home about. The town, that is. The views from up here were brilliant! I could see the wee Skerries just off to the north east, the Isle of Stroma and the Orkneys further beyond, and out to the north-west was Dunnet Head – Scotland’s most northerly mainland point despite what you might have previously heard about John O’ Groats.
I started to mentally and emotionally prepare for what I knew would be a fairly anti-climactic finish to all of this. There would be no one there waiting for me, and I figured the streets probably wouldn’t be lined with folk giving me high fives over the final 500m. Yet I had a strange feeling which had been bubbling away in the background for the last couple of days that something special might actually happen on arrival. There was another feeling starting to come to the surface also, and it’s quite hard to describe. What should I be doing over these last few miles to the finish? What should I be thinking? What would I say to people I went past? How should I process this achievement which was two and a half months in the making. The only thing I can liken it to was the 2017 AFL grand final. Similar thoughts had started passing through my head midway through the third quarter where I subconsciously started to realise we were going to win the premiership. I was again on the verge of a potentially life-changing moment, and suddenly I was a ball of nerves, excitement, anxiety, and euphoria all wrapped into one.
I descended down the hill, said gday to a bike rider and curled around to the right with the road. A little way down the road I passed a sign welcoming me to John O’Groats which looked just as overcast as it did the last time I was here, and further along still the road turned left and I was onto the final mile. About halfway down this road a car pulled up and I met Haydn and his wife, who were driving around the North Coast 500. They were incredibly lovely people, and Haydn tweaked pretty soon on in the piece that I’d been walking from a bit further than Wick as I’d initially indicated. He asked me a bunch of questions, then told me he’d meet me down at the end and take a photo of me in front of the sign. Their car drove off and I continued down the road, passing a few houses and places for accommodation, a post office and finally the end of John O’Groats came into sight. I was finally here, about 1700km down the road from Land’s End.
The first thing I did was walk all the way down to the water’s edge. I dumped my pack on a bench, and took the rock out that I’d been carrying from the start. Then I walked up to the water and threw it as far as I could – it sailed on a low trajectory through the air barely clearing the rocks on the shore’s edge, then found a safe passage into the North Sea. I’d done it, and throwing the rock into the sea from where it would have once come at the other end of the country was a liberating emotional release. I turned around and there was Haydn who’d come striding down from the sign to give me a big hug. His wife hugged me too, and they congratulated me on what I’d done. We went up to the sign and Haydn took a picture of me, then his wife took one of the pair of us. I then took a photo of a group of Kiwis who had travelled even further than me to be here. Haydn lives down in Edinburgh, and told me I must hit him up if I was ever in town for a pint and a feed and a place to stay. I tell you, the kindness of complete strangers on the duration of this walk has never stopped.
We went our separate ways and I went off to do a few odd jobs. I grabbed a few postcards at the tourist centre, and was directed to a cafe where there was a register I could sign to log that I’d completed the Land’s End to John O’Groats journey. The fella behind the counter even made me up a certificate. From there I walked back up to the pub and had a rather over-priced pint of local beer, before noticing it was 3pm and I really needed to get a move on if I was going to get to Thurso in time. I knocked the pint down in about five gulps, then took myself to the junction of the A99 and the A836 from where I would try and hitch a ride to Thurso.
I stuck a thumb out and noticed for the first time how damn cold it was today. About five cars went past without luck, and just as I bent down to put on a jacket one of the cars came back and did a U turn to pull up in front of me. There was some pretty good luck in the air today! Andrea was driving, a local from Wick, and told me they were on their way to Dunnet which was a bit past halfway to Thurso. I threw my gear in the back and hopped in the car. In the right passenger seat was Andrea’s Mum, and in the front was Sharmila, a couch surfer from India who’d been staying with them in Wick and who was due to begin traveling home tomorrow. All three of them were good craic, and Andrea even took us on a bit of a tour of the North Coast, stopping us in at Mey Castle which used to be a popular hangout for the Queen Mother. Now Charlie and Camilla stop in once a year apparently. We continued on and Andrea kindly told me she’d run me to Castletown instead which was a bit closer to Thurso. I told them a few stories about my week, how I’d stumbled across a bunch of seals north of Brora and how I’d met Davy from Whaligoe Steps. Before I knew it Andrea had told me she would drive all the way to Thurso, and 10 minutes later she’d pulled up right out the front of the station about 45 minutes before my train was set to depart! Andrea’s Mum gave me a packet of mint lollies as I jumped out of the car and said goodbye, and Sharmila gave me a beautiful hand-crafted bookmark which she told me to hang onto as a keepsake. We then exchanged details and she told me to come and stay if I was ever in New Delhi. We all said goodbye and I went and sat on the platform, waiting for my train to Culrain. There was a fence that needed building on the farm, and I figured that’d be the perfect way to debrief.
