Dunnet Bay Caravan Club Site, Caithness

15 August 2017:-  We set off this morning after I had hung a load of washing on my little rotary line, and finished off the bed linen in the camp dryer. Laundry machines in Caravan Club sites are very hungry, requiring £4 for a wash and £1 for every quarter hour. It does mean that I do not attend to this task until the laundry bag is bursting, such as it was this morning.

It is only a twenty minute drive westwards to John O’Groats from here and if you drive like the clappers as Chris did this morning, it is five minutes less, although you will get it in the neck from a grumpy passenger who might develop an early case of travel nausea in the process. Still this was a dummy run for tomorrow, and I insisted later in the day when we were working through the intricacies of our plans, that we make the journey tomorrow at a more sedate manner; there was no need to prelude sea sickness with car sickness. 

John O’Groats is one of the two northern ferry ports for the islands to the north, and the spot that most travellers consider to be the most northern reach of mainland Great Britain. This is not strictly so, however if you have cycled up from Land’s End in Cornwall for a charity ride as did our nephew a few years ago, you would be happy enough to call this The End. 

We parked and called into the John O’Groats Ferry office to confirm our booking for tomorrow, and to pay for our tickets. Our phone booking had been accepted so casually that we did wonder if our name would be on the passenger list; we should not have doubted.

While it was not our intention to linger here, the port and the surrounding land to be part of another day’s itinerary, we could not but notice an elderly chap wearing a Daniel Boon style hat, mounted on a horse and another with a professional looking camera darting about the scene. In fact we had been held up on our entry to the ferry port by this same man and his horse, followed by a vehicle towing a large horse trailer. We fell into conversation with another couple standing nearby watching the scene unfold and learned that this senior person was about to embark on a horse trek from here to Land’s End. I would love to have had internet to learn more about this, but instead must leave this story to our imagination; hold ups and traffic jams on Scotland’s narrow roads and a very exhausted horse, but then maybe there is a backup horse in the trailer rather than the bedding, food and whisky we had imagined.

We left John O’Groats and headed south on the A99, through rather desolate looking land, tree-less, peppered with crofts between the void and the shore. Soon we came down to Sinclair Bay, from where we looked across to Noss Head and short of that, the distant ruins of Castle Sinclair & Girnigoe. We passed on, the John O’Groats Wick airport rather unimpressive, then on down to Wick, the main destination of our day.

Finding a parking spot was easy, there was heaps of room down by the river, just up from the bridge, which we soon crossed on foot and headed downstream to explore the port area. There is a comprehensive amount of information about the township all about, all backed up by the excellent Heritage Centre staffed by such a lovely bunch of very passionate volunteers.

Wick is in fact two towns, Old Wick on the north side of the river, and Pulteneytown, the first purpose built industrial town in the world, on the south. In 1790 Thomas Telford was commissioned by the British Fisheries Society to write a report of all the coastal harbours in the north of Scotland, and Wick was chosen as the most suitable bay to develop for the expending herring industry with the building of a new harbour, and a settlement for the fishing community. 

This settlement commenced in 1807 was intended for 1,000 inhabitants, and included in the design were coopering yards, stores, and houses and a water supply. It was called Pultneytown in honour of Sir William Pulteney, MP and Chairman of the British Fisheries Society. It had been Pulteney’s patronage and friendship as a fellow Borderer, that gave Telford his start in life as a civil engineer working in Shropshire; a case for jobs for the boys. 

The harbour became operational by 1809 with both fishing and trading vessels making use of the new facility. Alas the new harbour proved from the start to be too small for the three hundred boats now crowded into it. There were also problems with silting at the harbour mouth and as a result many vessels used the small harbours to the north, or the Wick side of the bay. There was also a dip in production; in 1811 only 5,790 barrels of herring were cured compared with 18,250 barrels in 1810 and 12,192 in 1812. Even so, population had increased from about sixteen in 1800, to three hundred and by 1816 this had risen to one thousand. Plans were drawn for a new extension to the harbour and this was built by Wick man James Bremner and came into service in 1830 in which year 98,258 barrels of herring were cured.

1912 saw the biggest ever season in the catch of the herring fishing industry in Wick when a total of 169,730 barrels of herrings were cured. But this catch was never equalled again and during the First World War, the herring fishing shrank away. Most of the younger fishermen enlisted and the fishing vessels were requisitioned for naval duties.

By 1930 herrings were restricted to the summer season, and fishing for white fish took over the winter months. Then from 1940 to 1945, no herring were landed at all. There was a brief revival in the following years, but by 1955, when the last herring were landed, the industry which had lasted almost two centuries, came to an end. The Wick fleet turned full time to the white fish trade, but this too in time dwindled so that these days there are only two or three vessels operating from the port.

In the late 1950s, the idea of establishing a glass manufacturing business in Wick was sparked, almost in tandem with construction of the experimental nuclear power station in the Caithness region. The first glass was smelted in 1961 but after decades of relative success, the business was moved to a new factory in Oban.

As we explored the town, we could not help but think that the main source of income for the citizens was more than likely welfare. While it is on the North Coast 500, the tourist route being greatly promoted, it does not have a lot to offer, unless one has an interest in the local history as I do. My Benjamina was gone from Wick by 1840, as was her sister who also emigrated to Australia with her husband, Thomas Grant, and their six children. The names Grant, MacBeath, Sinclair, Sutherland, all part of this story popped up over and over, obviously a common name of the time in the place, hence particulars are hard to track.

We spent over an hour in the museum, a warren of rooms spead over three linked properties and as one of the volunteers explained, a regular Tardis of historical treasure.

After lunch and a wander about the commercial centre of the town, a very limited affair and hardly fitting for the population reportedly still leaving here, we headed back up the coast to Noss Head and parked at an access point for the remains of the Sinclair & Girnigoe Castle. Some publicity describes this as one of the most spectacular castles in Scotland, and I guess that is true in one sense. The remains are perched on the edge of spectacular cliffs above the surging sea, and the interpretative panels which revisualise the castle of its heydey certainly support that.

The castle had an important role in the political and social history of the Highlands. The Sinclair family, later to become the Earls of Caithness, and ancestors of my father and I, had occupied the site since at least the latter part of the 14^th century, when they were also Earls of Orkney, with a castle at Kirkwall and another at Rosslyn outside Edinburgh, this latter visited with the hordes a month or so ago. Although little is known about the early years of the castle, the mid 15^th century saw considerable activity as the family began to consolidate its home here. This continued through to the mid 17^th century, with the family investing large sums of money in the expansion and improvement of this symbol of their power.

Soon after this, there was dispute over ownership which resulted in the last clan battle at Altimarlach near Wick. The wrecked castle passed into the Dunbar family in about 1700 and soon the castle became ruined, and has remained so ever since. The derelict state recently reached a critical level; the impact of both high wind and the erosion of the adjacent cliffs by the sea were threatening to destroy the last upstanding elements of the site. With the formation of the Clan Sinclair Trust, a charity, a staged programme of archeological investigation, consolidation, maintenance and public presentation is now underway to reverse the damage. The castle has the statutory Protection of Scottish Ministers, and is designated a scheduled monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archeological Areas Act 1979. It is the only castle in Scotland to be listed by the World Monument Fund in their Watch List of the Most Endangered Sites in the World.

We set off across the top of the cliffs through pastoral land, grazing sheep in view and the bellow of bulls somewhere out of sight, toward the ruins. As we approached the castle, the skies opened up and we were caught up in an amazing deluge. Despite wearing raincoats and carrying umbrellas, we were absolutely drenched, our jeans sodden and our socks and shoes squelching with water. When the rain eased a little, we made our way around as much of the site open to the public as possible, but neither us nor the other equally drenched tourists, were in the mood to really appreciate the enchantment of the place.

Back in the car, we returned to Wick, then a mile south along a coast hugging road to visit the ruins of Old Wick Castle, reputedly a 12^th century structure. From the parking spot we could see the remnants of a tower far up on the hill, but neither of us had any heart to bother with exploration. We headed back to Wick yet again then up the A882, the most direct route to Thurso, twenty one miles across pleasant farmland, past Loch Watten from which  the Wick River flows. 

At Thurso we found our way to the Information Centre and consulted the lovely young women there about the NC500; let it not be said we did not do our homework, whatever the outcome of our eventual expredition.

We picked up a few groceries from the excellent Tesco Superstore, and agreed Thurso was worthy of further exploraton another day, but for now, headed home to find the washing almost dry. It seemed the deluges of rain had not been this way.

Postscript: The Daily Mail on 4 September reported that Sir Humphry Tyrell Wakefield, owner of Chillingham Castle, friend of Prince Philip and all-rounder British eccentric , in his 82^nd year is now part-way through an extraordinary solo ride from John O’Groats to Lands End on his 14 year old half Fresian gelding.