Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other: From Land's End to John O'Groats

I'm writing this post a day late, still in a state of mild disbelief mixed with euphoria, because after I finished walking at the signpost yesterday I was too busy celebrating with my parents. To be clear, the last 40 miles of Scotland made for really quite rubbish walking; the John O'Groats trail can't come soon enough. I'm sure along the cliffs and away from the noise of the road you could forget and forgive Caithness for being pretty flat, but on the A99 you can't help but notice. Also, the tarmac meant I was still developing blisters. All that being said, there was a long stretch where the road was almost empty and within view of the sea, which was nice, but was immediately followed by a tedious meandering climb over a moderately pathetic hill surrounded by moorland, after which John O'Groats came into view, still distressingly far away and not in the same direction as the road. I think my heart broke a little bit- or was it just my feet? - at the poin...

One of the things my brother forgot to mention while I was planning this walk was how flat and boring the penultimate 20 miles of Scotland are. I assume that the final 20 are going to be rather similar. It's a real shame that after three months of footpaths and scenery, I'm finishing with two days of roads and really quite spectacularly dull farmland. The road itself continues to be far less busy than I worried it might be, the HGVs are few and far between and mostly very good at giving me a wide berth - much appreciated as the turbulence otherwise feels like being hit - and the pavements extend a generous distance outside the towns: I walked for about two miles on the pavement into Wick, for example. I ended things with the A9 And am now involved with the A99, although there haven't been many signs to indicate the change and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, except the A99 may be somewhat straighter and more boring.  There are plans for a John O...

I think I've got used to walking along the edge of the A9. I'm definitely way less miserable than I was when I arrived in either Brora or Helmsdale. This may be a form of Stockholm syndrome, I don't know, I'm not a psychiatrist. The further North I get, the less I'm enjoying my days off, sadly. I think something happens to museum curators sent out here, because the museums have been getting increasingly unlike a museum ever since I crossed the border, with a bit of an exception made for Edinburgh (although their "history of Scotland" exhibition was really hard to follow or engage with). There was the meta-museum in Peebles, the somewhat chaotic Highland museum in Fort William, and then: Helmsdale. The museum- sorry, heritage centre- is exactly three rooms. The first looks like a museum: artifacts of the town's herring-fishing past, the salmon fishing in the river Helmsdale, and from the year-long gold rush, and some writing on the wall- again quite l...

There's only three days of walking left between me and John O'Groats, all of them entirely on the A9. Today's half-day was also all along the A9, and just to make sure there was no way I could possibly enjoy it, it rained. If walking along the edge of an A-road is already miserable, it becomes more so when you're wet, splashed by every passing vehicle, and sweating profusely inside your waterproofs. To add to it, this is the first time it has rained since I bought my new boots in Fort William and I'm sure you can all imagine my delight when, barely 4 miles in, they began to leak. I don't know if I'm just being unrealistic in my expectations, but I am fairly sure gore-tex is meant to keep you dry, even in a downpour, for more than an hour and a half. If walking along an A-road is dangerous, it becomes even more so in heavy rain. The visibility wasn't great today, with the clouds low and the rain relentless, and a lot of the cars had their headlights o...

Today was mostly a nice walk along quiet roads and paths, completely and utterly overshadowed by two stretches of the A9 which made me miserable beyond belief. I started off along a single track road out of Dornoch, which quickly turned into a nice walking path along the edge of the golf course with views out over the sea. I ambled along, joining the road along the edge of Loch Fleet, passing the ruined Skelbo Castle and dodging the caravans while admiring the seals. Then I walked four miles along the edge of the noisy, busy, horrendous A9, alternating between fearing for my life on the tarmac and turning my ankles on the verge. I get the impression the drivers mostly think I should be walking on the grass edge- all 12 inches of it- but that thing is not a lawn, it's a nightmarish mat of layers of dead grass with regular drains cut through it and cleverly disguised by more long grass. After Golspie, I got to drift along another lovely coastal footpath, with no sound other tha...

Today I had my first experience with the A9, and I'm afraid it looks unlikely we can be friends. Unless the road is closed to South-bound traffic from tomorrow until I get to John O'Groats next Wednesday, I predict that walking along the A9 is going to feel a lot like taking my life into my hands. There are a few problems I've already identified with the A9, and I'm sure I'll find more. To start with, as soon as the cycle route I was on yesterday hit the A9, its attitude to walker- and cyclist-safety became frankly lackadaisical. The same cycle route which provided me with an off-road tarmac path to protect me from the horrors of a mostly-deserted single-track road yesterday today decided that a painted white line along the edge of a thundering A-road frequented by HGVs carrying literal actual trees was sufficient protection. It did not change its mind as we crossed Dornoch Firth, with the exception of the actual bridge, where I was gifted a whole eighteen inches ...

Today's post is going to be brief for several reasons: the walk was short; nothing hilarious or momentous or irritating happened; and someone claiming to be a friend ( you know who you are ) sent me a link to a truly disastrously good story a few days ago and I've nearly finished it and I have to know what happens next although it will probably break me and none of you should read it. Slightly worryingly, I've not been able to send texts or make phonecalls since passing the 1,000 mile mark - perhaps the terrible network I'm with didn't bother with masts this far North? Amusingly, I've started seeing road signs for "the North", which I generally consider to start quite a long way South of here. I've been following them, though, mostly along cycle route 1, which has been giving me plenty of off-the-road walking without taking me too far from my intended route. I was hopeful it might take me to John O'Groats, but although it runs between Inver...

First things first, there's something I have to get off my chest: what kind of monster orders two pints of beer as they sit down in a restaurant? Answers on a postcard, please. I had a day off in Inverness, the "city in the Highlands", also known as "the cultural capital of the Highlands", which I was expecting to be full of, I don't know, culture, for some reason. Instead, I found that the castle is a Victorian-built court of law on the site of a historical stronghold, which you can't go into unless you've a court date and a lawyer, and the Cathedral was quite definitely smaller than Kings College Chapel. However, there was a Pizza Express so it wasn't a complete loss. Today was the first of many consecutive days of road-walking. Every step I took was on tarmac, and the relative thinness the soles of my new boots compared with my old ones is noticeable under those conditions. The blisters are much better, though. It was actually a nice day...

Today is a sort of milestone: I think Inverness is probably the last place I'll walk through before John O'Groats that everyone has heard of - although having said that, I've encountered people who hadn't heard of Land's End or of John O'Groats so maybe I'm being optimistic. There's another milestone, too: today I finished walking the Great Glen Way, making it the only long-distance trail I've actually followed from start to finish on this whole walk- and seeing as how I won't set foot on another between here and John O'Groats, I think we can all agree I left that satisfyingly to the last minute. Mark Moxon (the guy who's route I'm following) was very scathing the last 20 miles of the Great Glen Way, going so far as to say they should have been left out altogether. This, coupled with deep concerns about the quality and efficacy of the Boots own-brand blister plasters on my feet, the length of the walk, and a short-lived but intens...