the nephew
Day 64 Land’s End to John O’Groats
Distance: 31km
Cumulative distance: 1696km
Lisa had a baby boy! That happened a lot quicker than I expected, they sent a message before midnight telling me to Facetime them, I would’ve only missed the message by 15 minutes I reckon. As soon as I woke up I got onto Lisa and Matt, and they showed off a beautiful baby boy, Oliver James. He was more than nine pounds on arrival! And he has a right set of hair on him too, but most importantly the birth went about as well as you could hope and the three of them were already back at home by the time we spoke. I tell you what, that news gave me a fair spring in my step! Mum and Dad were finally grandparents after all these years…unfortunately I’d kind of dropped the ball in that department. I shovelled in breakfast pretty quickly while looking at some photos of Oli. The owners of this place had only recently bought it, and I reckon they might have a future ahead of them. It was slightly strange in that most of the rooms came with a bathroom, but they were unattached. That is there seemed to be as many bathrooms in the place as bedrooms. I’m not sure what it was before it became a BnB but with the increase in tourism to these parts thanks in part to the North Coast 500, they should do a roaring trade especially over the summer months.
I took off down the protracted driveway and then reconnected with the A99 for some cruisy miles into Lybster. There’s a beautiful natural harbour in Lybster, but I didn’t quite get down to it since it was on the south-western side of town and I was keen to save my legs for the many miles ahead. Even without seeing the harbour I found it an agreeable place, and a cute little dog followed me around for a while until I went off road and rejoined the coast path. I sat down for five minutes and struck up a yarn with a Gloucestershire couple who had recently made the move north. They were delighted with the change of scenery, and why wouldn’t you be – the sun was shining up here again and the ocean looked marvellous again, crashing into the base of the cliffs that seemed to stretch all the way up to the north coast. The plan today was to make it all the way to Wick. From there I could go for John O’Groats tomorrow, finishing the walk a day early which would give me an extra 24 hours back on the farm. Unfortunately the path to Wick wasn’t as straightforward as all that.
Initially I was pointing towards a place called Whaligoe, about halfway between Lybster and Wick. That would be a perfect stop for a late lunch and I’d read about a cafe right by the Whaligoe Steps that would do nicely for a bit of nourishment. But immediately after leaving Lybster I had a river crossing, a throw back to those punishing days along the coast in Cornwall. It took me most of the way down to the water and then back up to the edge of a farmer’s field. I was in pretty good walking nick these days having come so far and didn’t have too much trouble with it. There was much harder to come anyway. Soon enough the path was back to its tiny little strip between the farmer’s fences and the cliff edges. Making it harder than yesterday were the amount of little headlands and inlets that jagged into the coastline at far too regular intervals. It meant I couldn’t walk in a straight line to Whaligoe, rather I was at the mercy of the coastline and would need to simply obey it’s craggy shape. There was a reward for all this toil though, and that was a stunningly beautiful collection of rocky cliffs, each different to the one before it. I could have simply taken myself back up to the A99 but I would’ve missed all of this so I was happy enough with the trade off. When the narrow strip on the wrong side of the fence became too much for my banged up feet, I jumped over and started walking across the farmer’s fields again. The ground here was just as uneven, but at least it came without the risk of tumbling 50-odd metres into the ocean.
It did mean jumping a stack of barbed-wire fences and little streams but I was getting pretty good at both of those now. At one stage I needed to drop down a lot lower than where I was to cross a burn cutting through the field right down to the ocean. I was on top of a steep hill, and figured the quickest way to get down would be to sit down and just slide down slowly on my butt. I misjudged the steepness of that hill – as soon as I sit down I was off like a waterslide and landed in a pretty awkward position down the bottom with my backpack on top of me and my hand bent backwards at an unnatural angle. I shook it around a bit and it seemed okay. Bullet dodged – I’d be filthy if I came unstuck on the second-last day. Luckily the hill wasn’t too high, probably only five or six metres. Anyway, I took myself over the burn and pressed on deciding soon after that I would head back up to the A99 to try and speed up the process. It was 1.30pm, I was starving and the unpredictable coastline was making this a pretty slow day. As I approached Whaligoe I jumped a gate and went back to the coast path which took me all the way to the cafe. It was shut. FAAARK! Only open from Thursday to Sunday apparently, not on this pithy little Wednesday when I’d elected to rely on it for sustenance.
I’d planned to go and check out Whaligoe Steps but this was too crushing a blow. I walked up the hill, and slumped on a bench, fishing out half a packet of chips that I had left in my pack. It was going to have to do. After a minute or two of wallowing in self-pity, a 50-odd year old looking fella wearing a baseball cap and one of the greatest handlebar moustaches I’d ever seen came down and said in a thick Caithness accent:
“Did you go and see the steps?”
To which I replied “Mate I was too shattered that the cafe was shut so I thought I’d just come and sit here.”
A minute later I was inside Davy’s little unit and he was making me a coffee while telling me how he’d spent the last 27 years maintaining the Steps, having taken over from his uncle. That’s on top of a full-time job, but I just happened to turn up to the place while he was on a week’s leave. He had a large black-and-white photograph in his kitchen which showed off the Steps in all their glory from the 1940s (I think), when fishing boats still used the harbour to bring in their hauls of herring. It was the women who used to haul the fish up by the way, sometimes several times a day and they still had to cook tea after all that, Davy told me. The steps were built in the late 1700s and Davy said there used to be 365 of the things, but vandalism had reduced that number to 330. He took me through to his lounge room and loaded me up with as many biscuits as I could handle (I didn’t hold back let me tell you) while he told me story after story surrounding the steps. Billy Connolly visited the Steps back in the 1990s but I’ll let Davy spin you that yarn. I will, however, tell you my favourite story relayed to me by Davy. One day, Davy said, a group of three Americans turned up wanting to go and see the steps.
“40 stone each they would’ve been,” Davy said, before telling me how he took them down to the bottom of the steps and let them look around for 20 minutes.
“What’s that little cottage down here for, I guess somewhere for the fisherman to live?”, one of the Americans asked.
“No no, that was a place to store and salt the herring,” Davy replied.
“Oh I don’t believe that at all,” retorted the American. “And what about these ropes, are they to help pull the boats up in bad weather?”
“Oh no, that’s to help yank up the barrels of fish,” Davy said. (Or something to that effect).
“No no, that doesn’t sound right either,” the American said.
This went on a few more times and Davy eventually left the visitors to their own devices and went back up the top. Another 20 minutes later he heard some groaning noises and the three Americans heaved themselves towards him completely out of breath and covered in layers of sweat.
“Didn’t you see the elevator down there?” Davy quipped, quick as a flash.
So the Americans turned around, and tramped all the way back down to the foot of the steps spending another 20 minutes searching for the elevator. Twenty minutes later still, they hauled themselves back before Davy covered in even more sweat only for Davy to say “I bet you don’t believe me about the elevator either.”
He gets visitors from all over the world this fella, and told me he was in guidebooks about the place which I thought was pretty cool. Postcards come in from all corners of the globe – he once received one that was addressed simply to ‘Davy at Whaligoe Steps’, and the postie eventually found the right address. I left my pack in Davy’s place and went down to have a look at the Steps myself. I’m glad I did, it wasn’t actually too bad getting down and it was pretty cool down there, a tiny little harbour protected by tall cliffs on either side. You could see where the boats would have come in to offload their fish, and I could almost imagine a scene from centuries past when the place was swarming with herring. I took myself back up the 330 steps, grabbed my pack, said goodbye to Davy and then was off with that spring back in my stride.
From there it was eight miles along the A99 to Wick, or probably a bunch more via the JOG Trail along the coastline. I opted for the quicker option and made good time into the biggest town I’d seen for quite a while. It looked like a nice place, and the harbour was pretty picturesque. I found my BnB, went in for a shower then set off to find a Wetherspoons. I will definitely try to finish this thing tomorrow, it was only another 25km or so if I took the A99.
