The far north, heading for the Orkney Islands

We are in St. Clair’s Hotel, Thurso for the night. Up here in the North-east tip of Scotland we are at 58 degrees North, sharing the latitude with Southern Norway, Alaska, Russia and the Hudson Bay. The place names are Norse and many seem to end in –ster: Scrabster, Lybster, Rumster, Occumster. It didn’t seem safe to pitch a tent. We sat in the car on Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of the British mainland (not John O’ Groats), with the sea kayaks on the roof, feeling it rock from side to side. Water sprayed up through clefts in the cliff. On this high headland the upper windows of the lighthouse can be smashed by rocks flung from the powerful tides and waves of the Pentland Firth, where Atlantic Ocean and North Sea meet. It is a daunting place. It feels like a different country to the West with vast heather moors tilting down towards the North Sea, dotted with ruined crofts from the time of the Clearances. Everything seems on a giant scale: cliffs, waves and wide, empty sandy beaches. It is also very quiet; on Bank Holiday Saturday there was hardly any traffic on the A9. Ironically there was a discussion on the radio about the population explosion in Britain as we travelled. Anyway, after four weeks completely outdoors, coming in for a night seemed very strange. It’s not always comfortable living in a small tent but you are aware of every minute change in the temperature, what the wind’s doing and the state of the tide. Sunset is at half past eight here. Sometime in September it will change from having longer days than further south to shorter. We’re sailing to Stromness in Orkney tomorrow.