Orkney Islands via Scenic Drive

Wednesday, 18 September 2019

We had a nice night in Ullapool which is good since we have a 5 hour drive in front of us.  If we drove the direct route, the drive would only take 3 hours, however, like yesterday, we are taking the scenic route along the coast.

Today's drive

Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, with fog and rain.  At least, I guess, we get to hang out inside a car and not have to walk or hike around.  Even with the bad weather, Tim got some great photographs.

Ardvrech Castle

The single-track road we drove

We stopped in the town of Durness and bought some lunch in the convenience store.  On the edge of town was the John Lennon Memorial Garden.  Between the ages of nine to sixteen, John Lennon spent his holidays here in Durness.

John Lennon Memorial Garden

Back on the road, we now had two hours left of driving to do along the North Coast of mainland Scotland.  The foggy and rainy weather continued as did the one lane road.  In case the road and weather conditions weren't enough to deal with, we also had livestock and bicycles to avoid.

Here are some more shots that Tim got out the window as we drive by.  He is getting pretty good at these.

We were driving to Thurso, but there is a brewery just 4 miles east of here in John O'Groats, so of course we had to check it out.  When we pulled up, we were pretty surprised to see that the brewery was inside a building made from a trucking container.

They didn't have a tasting room, but the bar across the street had one of their beers on tap, a red ale.

John O'Groats Brewery, John O'Groats, Scotland

Oh yeah...we found out that all these coast routes that we are taking i actually marketed to be called the North Coast 500 AKA Route 500.  It is a loop that starts and ends in Inverness.  Even though we didn't start in Inverness, we are ending there is a few day, so we are probably going to complete at least 90% of this route.  This explains why we have been seeing high performance cars along with vintage cars, motorcycles, camper vans, and bicycles.

DId I mention that we are taking a ferry today to the Orkney Islands, 10 miles north of the Scotland?  Well, we are, and here is our car (the black one) riding the ferry along with us.

We are now, way up there.  The only part of Scotland that is more north is the Shetland Islands that we are not going to, so this is as far north as we are going.

We arrived on the island at 7:30 PM and drove the 30 minutes to our AirBnB.  We settled in and walked to the Chinese restaurant down the street, ordered takeout, and returned to the AirBnB.  We ate, watched TV, and planned our side trip to Belgium.  Oh, we have a Visa issue so we have to leave the UK and go to mainland Europe to restart our 6 month Visa for the UK.  We decided on a few day trip through the Chunnel to Brussels.  We have already visited Brussels, so the plan is to spend two days drinking Belgium beer.  This isn't until November, but the tickets had to be purchased now to keep the cost down.

After the stress of planning this trip, we went to bed.  Tomorrow we explore the Neolithic sites on Orkney.  It should be fun.