Saturday June 23rd

So, getting up at 4am isn't the best thing obviously, but we did it because it would give us plenty of time to drive along the north and north west coast of Scotland to our B&B in a little place called Scourie.  We left Kirkwall at 6:30am in the mist, and I slept most of the way, while Mathew dozed.  I didn't feel nauseous at all, thanks to the water being quite still – usually when going on a holiday involving a ferry there and back I feel bad one way and not the other, but this time I was fine both ways – the first time this has ever happened! :)

Back on mainland UK in Scrabster, we made our way west across the coast.  The first thing we stopped off at was the chapel of St Mary at Crosskirk which is reputedly one of the oldest remaining ecclesiastical buildings in Caithness, having been built probably in the 12^th century, but this building resembles churches in Orkney rather than those in the Scottish Highlands.

We continued on to see a couple of long cairns at Cnoc Freiceadain which we had spotted on the map, although they weren't quite as interesting as those on Orkney – no crawling into these, as they were just mounds on a hill!  Continuing on, the fog was really coming down and we couldn't see a great deal ahead of us – if there had been any mountains we didn't see them!  We stopped off at a place called Bettyhill where we knew there was a Museum, but we didn't know there was a little cafe / tearoom / information centre as well.  So we stopped off there first and had a bite to eat – by now it was 10:30am and it had been 6 hours since breakfast for us.  Mathew had a pot of tea with a bacon roll while I had mini caffetiere of coffee and a fruit scone with jam and cream!  That hit the spot!! :)

We visited “Strathnaver Museum” across the road which was quite quirky and made good use of the building which used to be the Parish Church of Farr.  It was obviously quite popular with international visitors - we were told that some Germans and Dutch had been before us, and some Australians came in just as we left!  In the graveyard there was “The Farr Stone”, a Pictish cross-slab dating from around the 8^th or 9^th century AD.  We then went down the road to see Coille Na Borgie Cairns which were never properly excavated and are now quite grown over and you probably wouldn't really recognise it as a Cairn unless you had seen a fully excavated one.  We also stopped off to look at Achcoillenaborgie - “Place of the wood of the fort” which was a broch, but again, you wouldn't recognise it as such unless you had visited a fully excavated one.  We finally visited Achanlochy – a village abandoned during the Highland Clearances in 1819, which now were nothing more than grassy mounds although you could easily figure out what was what when walking amongst the foundations.

Moving on, the fog was not leaving us and was denying us any mountain or coastal views whatsoever!  We found a place to have some lunch and had a bit of a doze in the car before moving on to investigate Smoo Cave, and a short walk along a coast here.  By the time we had awoken from our little slumber, some of the cloud had lifted, although this had only happened on the coast, not inland.  At least we had a good view out to sea!

Continuing on to our final destination for the day, the fog was still there covering plenty of scenery which I am sure would have been pretty amazing if we had been able to see anything above around 200 – 300 metres, as most of the peaks in this area were 400 – 700 metres in height.  Ben Stack was one which Mathew would have liked to have seen but the summit was hidden from us.

Eventually we reached Scourie, earlier than originally planned.  The owner of “Minch View” where we were staying had previously written to me saying that she would be out, but a couple from Hull staying there the same night as us would let us in and show us around.  Come 6pm they still hadn't arrived, so we headed out to Scourie Hotel which had a pub around the back and we had some dinner.  By the time we returned to “Minch View”, the couple from Hull were there and we all realised that we had passed each other on our way to the pub for dinner!

The owner, Christine was a very funny lady and very welcoming.  Her speech was quite fast and her accent strong so it took a little while to get the ear around what she was saying but we got the gist of it most of the time, it was very similar to a fast paced Irish accent.  This B&B was a traditional one – she obviously enjoyed meeting her guests and sharing a tipple with them in the evenings.  Tonight she got home from having been to a wedding for the day – it was around 10:15pm when she returned home to find us and three others having tea and cake in her front room.  She joined us with some Cointreau which she said she had been given for her Birthday and offered some to us all as she hated drinking alone and she was “gasping” after having been to a Wedding and hadn’t been able to drink as she was driving all the way from Inverness!  She had 2 glasses of it and we spent the evening listening to her stories of her “Crofting Days” which were all highly amusing!  We ended up going to bed at almost midnight.