Saturday June 16th

After breakfast and checking out of our B+B, we went to Duncansby's Head which is the real north-easterly point of the UK, not where the well known signpost is where everyone gets their photo taken.  Mathew had decided on a walk this morning, but when calculating how long it would take us to get to Scrabster, he thought that perhaps we could just park there and walk to the end.  Good job we did actually, as it was …. um...... bracing, shall we say? :)  I was happy that I had decided to put on ALL my thermals anyway....!  So, after a short walk here, we went to the place where everyone gets their photo taken.  I have never been here before so I didn't know what to expect, although I was thinking of Lands' End.  It was similar to this, but much more run down.

The “craft village” didn't exist, “Caithness Candles” was closed, and there was just one shop which we went in, run by an artist and it it was actually a very nice little shop with – I'm guessing – a small studio behind it as most of the closed shops seem to have this layout.  Opposite, there were a couple of other tourist shops and a cafe all of which were fine, but I'm guessing they might be in the process of doing the place up at the moment which is why it looked like it was in limbo, especially as we saw a large building – possibly a hotel – was in scaffolding.  I did, however, find a good quality pair of gloves here for £5 which I planned to use with cairn exploration!

 
Leaving John O'Groats, we headed towards Scrabster and ended up arriving in Thurso (just down the road) much sooner than we thought we would!  We decided to stop off here and have a look around especially as we still had about an hour to go before we had to check in with the Ferry.  We weren't sure if our Ferry would be doing food, although I thought it might do because it was the 13:15 crossing which would be around lunchtime.  In Thurso, which was quite a nice little seaside town, we found a nice looking bakery and bought some sandwiches there before heading back to the car park.

Onward to Scrabster and we checked in with no problems, and waited in lane number 5.  We both got peckish before we boarded so we had our lunch in the car while we waited, although I was just about finishing mine when we boarded the Ferry!  Out of the car we got and found the “sun deck” where everyone else was milling around, and we stayed there until we left the port.  Inside, we went to get a hot drink (they WERE doing food by the way, but it was hot meals only) and sat down.  The TV screens were showing a mixture of things, ours was showing Poirot and behind us they had tennis.  I just read my National Geographic for the most part, and it turned out that this journey was not making me feel nauseous – I usually do when travelling over water but it usually happens just one way.....we shall see about that!  This time the water was pretty calm, and there were a few sways here and there but I think we were swaying in the right direction....if anything, I was feeling quite sleepy!

There was an announcement that we were passing the “Old Man of Hoy” so of course everyone filled the decks outside and crowded around to see this giant stack of stone off the island of Hoy.  We went back into the cabin until we reached Stromess on the mainland, got back into the car and parked just outside the information office as soon as we got there.  Mathew found directions to the holiday cottage (something he had forgotten to do before we came on holiday hehe!)  And we decided to look around a little.  We didn't really go into the centre of Stromness but it turned out that we ended up walking along a street with lots of craft shops, half of which were closed, half of which were open and about £15 and 4 shops later I had bought my first Orkney Souvenirs! :D  Well, why not?

Back to the car, we went to the Co-op and did a food shop before heading to our holiday cottage.  I'm not sure if it you could call it a cottage as such, but more a new building solely designed for holiday lets.  It is a fairly new building comprised of 4 holiday lets – ours was called Rysa.  It was very modern, clean and new inside, but it looked really nice and comfortable.  It looked really quite small on the outside, but inside there was much more space than I expected!  The living / dining area was combined, the bathroom was quite large, and the bedroom just the right size although the wardrobes were a little on the small size, but we managed to fit all our stuff in there.

It was really nice to be able to unpack our suitcases and unload the car of our stuff.  I am sure we will be feeling very light tomorrow!  We had spaghetti bolognaise for dinner and I did a little washing before we chilled out for the rest of the evening.