Distance: 12.71 miles
Ascent: 196 metres
Duration: 3 hours 52 minutes
West from the Dutchman's house
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With LE-JoG done, it's time for us to pick up on JoG-LE again. We're heading west.
The walk started out well with a good footpath leaving John o' Groats, but that quickly petered out. We soon tired of trying to find a coastal route across fields so dropped back to minor roads.
A tombstone in the church at Canisbay marks the grave of a Dutchman, Jan de Groot, who was granted a license to run a ferry to Orkney. It's curious seeing evidence that Jan was anything other than a fable, dreamt up as a quaint story to tell tourist day-trippers about how a place got its name.
In an attempt to encourage more tourists to the far north of Scotland, a touring route — the North Coast 500 — has been created. Its popularity has rocketed of late and we were expecting the roads we walked on today to be busy with NC500 cars and bikes, but traffic was reasonably light.
We eventually hit the beach again just before the Castle of May, a collection of tall, square stone towers looking out over the Firth, chiefly famous for being a favourite haunt of the Queen Mother. On any other day, we would have stopped to explore the stone-walled gardens and enjoy a pot of tea in the castle grounds. Instead we dashed past the gates and paced on along the roadside to Brough to catch the bus back to Jan de Groot's old house.
Notes for future walkers:
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