Caravaning

Family Tour 2018 Day 7-8 - Day 7

Day 7: 28/09/2017, Altnaharra to East Mey (116 miles)

While walking the dogs before breakfast I first had to get a picture of one of the best farmers signs I had ever seen:

Yes, the sheep and lambs around this area truly have no road sense, and with them free ranging, real care needed to be taken.

Sun rise was something to be beheld too:

But with a bit of sadness to leave such a beautiful site behind, we packed up, and by 10 am we were on our way.

We retraced our steps from the previous day passed through Syre and Bettyhill, passing the white walled, red roofed church in Syre:

We had wondered about heading out to Strathy Point to see the lighthouse, but didn't fancy our chances of a dead end road with a caravan behind.  But just after the village of Strathy, there was a nice big carpark with views looking back on the lighthouse.  It was fairly breezy, but I got a few snaps of it in the distance

We hoped to fill up ready for our drive down to Inverness in Thurso, or another petrol station or 2 between us and our camp site in East Mey, but one was getting its fuel delivery, and the other appeared to be waiting for the tanker to make it there too, so we carried on to the camp site.  This was another Certificated Location, called The Crofters Snug.

They also have some glamping pods, which the owner was staying in, rather than the house, and came over to direct us to a pitch.  He also recommended using the mover to face nose down the inclined pitch to face the front windows across the 1 field between us, the sea and then Orkney.  We didn't bother with the awning, as it was rather a stiff breeze, and we were only staying one night.

With the dogs settled, we then popped out for a hearty bowl of soup (and lots of grandparents complimenting us on our daughter) at Castle of Mey.

This castle was purchased by the Queen Mother after King George VI had died, and she set about getting it renovated.

The farm animals were visited first before we had a sleepy little girl on our hands:

Then we made our way back through the amazingly twisted trees:

to go round the walled gardens:

Then we went back and found the dogs and gave them a chance to stretch their legs, first by visiting John O'Groats

I've not got a huge amount to say about it.  It's not the most northerly or easterly point of the UK mainland (Dunnet Head, just around the corner is most northerly , Lowestoft in Suffolk most easterly).  But we did a little bit of shopping, as there were some touristy shops there.

After that, we went on to find a more north-easterly point, which was a couple of miles along the road at Duncansby Head.  There was a fair amount of weather out to sea over Orkney, but it avoided us:

There was another lighthouse, similar in style to the Strathy Point lighthouse:

and on another day when there wasn't such a stiff breeze and a sleeping baby in the car, a walk to the Duncansby stacks would have been nice:

Back at the car, we then decided to head down to Wick, in search of fuel and food (neither seemed to be in much supply in the area) and had a bit of a supermarket sweep in Tesco.  We were mighty impressed with the meat on their deli-counter, as we'd not seen a "local" butcher to stock up at.

Having got food to fill the fridge, and fuel for another few hundred miles, we went back to the caravan for the night: