Bettyhill to John O’Groats – 51 Miles
The final push. We’d pretty much decided to ban that phrase. I don’t exactly know why. Maybe it just sounded too keen, too jolly, the language of a life-time member of the Rambler’s association who reads his YHA newsletter from cover to cover and dubbins his boots after every walk. Or maybe we felt the phrase was too clichéd for our ‘elevated’ levels of conversation and humour.
Maybe there was a deeper reason: none of us wanted this journey to end. Fact is, we had grown used to life in our bubble, to its simplicity and certainty. Every morning for the past month, we had woken up to face the singular challenge of getting to our destination in one piece, preferably before nightfall. In comparison, ‘normal’ life back home seemed like a dark morass of responsibilities, all of them complex and ill-defined: bills, taxes, work, cooking, cleaning, fixing the roof. Modern life, in other words. Friends and family had already started to send us messages of congratulations on our amazing, wonderful achievement. But, without a doubt, we had been living the easy life. Back home, that’s where the struggle lay and we looked forward to it with foreboding.
There was plenty of foreboding that morning, as we ate our last full Scottish (served by a young woman from the Lake District who came up here to work the summer season), packed our panniers, extracted our bikes from the shed behind the Bettyhill Hotel and loaded them, ready for wagons roll. None of us voiced our concerns aloud but, apart from those concerns about getting sucked back into ‘normal’ life, we also knew that if our luck was going to run out, it would run out today. So far we’d been blessed in so many ways: by lack of rain, absence of illness or major mechanical breakdown. The nightmare scenarios we had been harbouring since well before the start of the journey–torrential rain, crippling headwinds, wheels falling off mid-ride, a major crash–had to happen today if they were going to happen at all. And these vague anxieties were coupled with the certain knowledge that we had an exceptionally hilly ride ahead of us, a throwback to the sharks teeth of Devon and Cornwall. But, as we set off down the north coast road, we manage to cover our concerns with veneer of good cheer as blustery as the weather.
Komoot’s elevation profile showed five serious climbs between Bettyhill and John O’Groats. The first and hardest of them hit us almost immediately, a long ascent to a place called The Bettyhill Viewpoint. We weren’t yet warmed up but we attacked, Tim powering to the front with his chain on the largest of his three chainrings, Phil hanging back in deference to Henry the Hernia and his compromised gear ratios and Jools bringing up the rear on his eBike in deference to our analogue rides. We reached the summit with reassuring ease, forgetting the strength we’d built up in our muscles since those salad days in Cornwall. The foreboding began to drain away, clearing some mind space to drink in the gnarled hills, the glimpses of sea and beach to the north, framed by dizzying cliffs and headlands.
Those darker fears gave way to the fear of not finding a good place for our morning coffee. The Coast ‘tea and coffee’ van we passed on the way up to the viewpoint was closed, as was the Strathy Inn and Coastline Coffee, several miles further up the road. We were the victims of our own keenness, having set off too early to avail ourselves of these watering holes. As we idled on the opposite side of the road to Coastline Coffee, the convoy of dark BMWs we’d passed the day before hoved into view and parked in the lay-by next to the café. A couple of the Asian drivers got out to see if it was open. ‘Beautiful day!’ one of them hollered over to us as he got back into his car. We hollered back in agreement. Friendly bunch those BMW dudes.
The Halladale Inn and Touring Park, just south of Portskerra, looked more promising. We rolled into the empty parking lot and peered through the windows for signs of life. Jools went to see if he could find the owner. He came back looking deflated, in a bemused way. ‘Guess what boys, the owners are selling up and they’re exchanging contracts today.’ ‘Why are they selling?’ ‘They’re fed up. They want a different life.’ We laughed and groaned and laughed again. Amongst all our dire imagined fates, the actual fate of always turning up at cafés and pubs when they were either shut, or out of service, or inoperative in one way or another, seemed comically benign in comparison. We resorted to Jools’ coffee bags once again, and ate whatever sugar-highs we could find in the recesses of our panniers. The sun shone, the breeze was soft, and we began to believe in our impregnable good fortune again.
The hills came and went. The sun kept shining. We never imagined that some of the best weather of the trip would grace us now, in this northernmost westernmost corner of the land. We kept going, up over the heathery heights, down into the village of Reay with its wide views of Sandside Bay, the epic nature of the landscape the reward for our panting, our straining muscles. The giant pingpong ball of the Dounreay nuclear plant was visible in the distance as we struck off inland on a minor road, under the Hill of Shebster and across the bridge over Forss Water.
Just past Westfield we saw an inviting sign that read ‘Our Wee Shop’, attached to a shipping container outside an immense timber yard. Having so far failed to find a place where we could fill our groaning bellies, the sudden appearance of Our Wee Shop was very welcome, all the more so when we stepped inside and saw an impressive array of local produce–honey, fudge, cakes, biscuits, sandwiches, drinks–and a sizeable coffee machine sitting behind the counter. A teenage girl with hair the colour of blood oranges, skin the colour of cream and freckles sprinkled delicately over her nose and cheeks, a startling Scottish beauty in other words, took our orders and we sat at the table outside guzzling happily in the sun. Traffic on the road, though sparse, motored along at breakneck speed. Speeding on the small straight roads of north Caithness was obviously a popular local sport. But we didn’t mind. Our luck would hold, we felt it in our bones.
And on to Thurso. The size of the place seemed incongruous in a region that, in my southern imagination, had always seemed so remote. Over 7,000 souls now live in this old seaport, once so crucial to the Norsemen’s trading prosperity. Its dour granite facades, armour against the elements, seemed apt however. What must it feel like to wake up on a cold February morning and look out over all that grey? We cycled over the old bridge that spans the Thurso river and carried on up the A836, ignoring Komoot’s entreaties to stick to a longer, hillier route inland. Like horses returning home after a long excursion, we were beginning to smell the hay and feel the draw of a warm stable. Twenty miles to go, the last twenty of over 1,150 miles. The final push. There, I said it.
But in our haste we lost Tim. I can’t remember whether he’d stopped to take a picture, or to pick up a glove that had fallen from Jools’ bar bag, but he missed the turning after the bridge, and carried straight on up through a housing estate. Meanwhile we turned right and powered on along the A road that runs dead straight through Murkle to Castletown, with traffic nipping at our heels, impatient to pass, and Dunnet Head, Britain’s northernmost tip, curving round in the far distance, the blue hills of Orkney resting on the horizon beyond. The fields that sloped down from the road to the sea were all harvested, the hay gathered into neat rolls like pieces on some immense board game. Jools rang, and we squeezed into the verge to take his call, the traffic roaring dangerously close. He told us he was going back to find Tim and could we wait. It was the first time in the entire journey that we’d lost one of the party. Not the worst twist that fate could have come up with on this our last day. We waited in a driveway at the entrance to Castletown and were soon reunited with Tim, who brushed the whole experience off with peels of gentle laughter.
We took a side road up into the back country and the landscape began to open up, flattening under the thickening clouds, with wide fields and isolated farm houses stretching off into the far distance. That feeling of approaching the end of the world grew stronger and stronger, just as it does as you approach Lands End, the sky expanding and the horizons lengthening. Only here it was on a different scale, vaster and more forbidding. We stopped at the junction with a track, near Loch Heilen, for our last fag break. A middle-aged guy drew up in a car and asked the way to the Loch. ‘I’m looking for a place to fish,’ he said. He looked rough and moody and talked as if his fishing expedition had some dark intent he didn’t want to divulge. I showed him a route on my OS app and he disappeared down the track. We continued along roads that cut ruler straight to distant horizons, as if built by Roman legionnaires, though as far as I knew, no Roman ever came this far north. I stopped to take a photo of a war memorial that stood alone by the side of the road, far from any human habitation, a bleak and lonely reminder of human grief and human madness. We hung around for a bit, still at little wary perhaps of reaching the finishing line. Then Phil said, ‘Ok, come on. Let’s do this thing.’
We turned northeast and cycled down the hill and through the village of Canisbay, past the old kirk where the remains of Jan de Groot lay buried. De Groot was a Dutchman who came to this far flung corner of Scotland during the reign of James IV, sometime around 1500, for reasons that remain mysterious. He set up a ferry service to Orkney, eventually securing a monopoly on that route from the king himself. The 4d coin he took in payment was known as a ‘groat’. Contrary to popular legend, it wasn’t actually named after De Groot himself, but had already existed for a century or more. No matter; De Groot was clearly a canny cove. To appease the status anxiety and bickering of his seven off-spring, or perhaps it was his seven siblings (accounts seem to vary), he built an octagonal house on the site now occupied by the old John O’Groats Hotel (recently renovated as self-catering apartments). De Groot modelled the house on the windmills of his native land and put a separate door on each of its eight sides. Inside, he installed an octagonal table. That way, the jealous kids (or brothers and sisters), could visit without worrying who sat at the head of the table, or who entered first through the house gates. Whether this experiment in psycho-social housebuilding worked, the chronicles do not say, but John of the Groats, or John the Great, whichever you prefer, managed to get the furthest northeastern point of Great Britain named after him in perpetuity. Not quite the furthest. In strictly geographical terms, the honour for the easternmost point should go to the much neglected Duncansby Head, which is two and half miles due east of John O’Groats, and the northernmost accolade to the equally overlooked Dunnet Head, fifteen miles back west. But how could you not avail yourself of a name like John O’Groats. In terms of memorable nomenclature, it’s an open goal.
As we approached along the main A836, I could my stomach fluttering, more from nerves than any feeling of elation. Or maybe a mixture of both. This was it. Journey’s end. Here on this flat expanse of grey green earth, under a flat grey sky, pedalling slowly toward our final horizon. John O’Groats didn’t really seem to be a place at all, but rather a random collection of buildings scattered about the fields, with no central point, no heart. Just past the fire station, I stopped to take a picture of the others riding past the sign for John O’Groats and Wick. When I caught up with them again Jools called out to me, ‘Go on, you go first. You do the honours!’. And so we turned left and freewheeled down the hill towards the sea, past the car park, the caravans, the luxury pods recently built by Peter de Savary, who seems intent in stamping his tawdry mark on both extremities of this green and pleasant land, through another car park and up to the famous sign.
There was no ceremony. Nobody paid us much notice. We dismounted near the sign and watched the day-trippers milling about to have their photo taken, or looked out to sea, admiring the views of Stroma and Orkney, and down at the dinky little harbour with its two sea-walls jutting out like protective arms. This was the culmination of 18 months of dreaming, planning, training, riding, but it felt strangely muted, quiet. Then Phil turned to me and said, ‘Well done mate’, and gave me a big man hug, and we did the same to each other. Kind words were said, good-natured mickey taken. We’d done it, the four musketeers, the drongo quartet, three old English men and a 21-year-old Nigerian, the dream team. We’d done it.
We took our turn up by the sign, and a few people asked us if we come the whole way. Yes, we had. Do you want me to take your picture? Yes, please. Well done. That’s impressive. I’d love to do that one day. I did that sixteen years ago. Both ways. My smile was fixed now. We’d done it. We’d bloody well done it. I posted one of the photos by the sign on Instagram and WhatsApp and the congratulations started to come, a trickle at first, then a torrent. It was all done now, secure in our memories, in these words I’m writing now, not a fantasy or a wishful dream any more, but a fact. And that felt good.
We slowly began to prepare ourselves for what came next, the aftermath. I nipped in to the gift shop just down the slope from the sign and bought a few post cards to send to people who had helped us along the way. Then we mounted our bikes and rode up the hill to the Sea View Hotel, John O’Groats’s only bar / restaurant. About half way up, it began to drizzle and I had to laugh out loud. The kindness of the weather gods was beyond belief. The genies of LEJOG had stuck close and succoured us since that moment, aeons ago and 1071 miles away., when we cycled away from the Lands End pavilion, waving goodbye to Katie as she stood on a rock filming us, and disappeared over the hill. We couldn’t have asked for better fortune, better company, better weather, a better ride.
That night we slept in a well appointed mobile home about 200 yards from the famous sign. Wind and rain buffeted the windows, but we were warm and snug inside. It took us the next day and more, from 7am to 3am the following morning, to get ourselves and our bikes back home to Bristol by rail and road, most of it by road. Tim went back by plane because there was only room for three of us in the hire van that we picked up in Inverness. Needless to say, it felt strange and unsettling to be back in the world of cars, vans, service stations and motorways. The journey back was like a high-speed rewind of our epic ride, the names of places we’d stayed or passed through flashing by us in reverse: Inverness, Pitlochry, Stirling, Lockerbie, Carlisle, Kendal, Lancaster, Preston, Chorley, Liverpool, Chester, Shrewsbury, Hereford. Had it taken us so long to string those places together on two wheels? Yes. 21 days in fact. Time enough to burrow into the nooks and crannies of this land of ours, to see the good, the bad, the ugly close up, to savour the kindness of strangers, to see beauty unfurl at 10 miles an hour, day after day after day. And to understand that there’s really no limit to how far you can go on two wheels. You just need to wake up, load up, put your feet on the pedals, and ride.
Andy Morgan.
