Yesterday evening gave us an interesting glimpse into the mind of someone who provides accommodation and information principally for JOGLE walkers, when he returned our greeting by laughing  maniacally at us. Not with, definitely at. He went on to explain and to advise us on how not to get killed……

The explanation first: Most walkers do LEJOG, and so by the time they reach this man’s tiny accommodation pods for the princely sum of £120 a night, they have given up all sense of reality; Lands End is but a dim memory; they are exhausted and just want to get through the next two days walking to John O Groats alive. So our fresh faces and legs were clearly a source of great novelty and, therefore, amusement.

We brushed this laughter off and took his very helpful, short cut directions to Tasty Toes lobster roll shack, with a smile. As you know from yesterday’s blog, the lobster roll rated “OK”, not photo worthy and definitely not filling enough for someone who’d walked 36km (22.5 miles) that day. So we took advantage of our proprietor’s additional skills and ordered home cooked pepperoni pizza delivered to our pod later that evening. The pizza was excellent, the apology for laughing at us: not quite what we expected. He followed the apology with two things that made us think that he was actually sorry, not sorry at all and we were just Little Red Riding Hood being lured into his trap. Firstly, he explained again why we were so hysterically funny in his eyes, in case we missed it the first time. Thanks.

Secondly, we got his sage advice on how not to get killed. Specifically he said that we should not leave Dunbeath to continue our walk on the A9 as there are loads of fatalities, walkers get killed on this route all the time apparently, it’s really dangerous, not safe at all.

As we had already spent two days dodging lorries we were aware of the A9’s lack of charm.

Since this man’s directions to Tasty Toes were so good, we were very grateful to be told in no uncertain terms, it was MUCH safer to take the John O Groats trail. He mentioned that parts of the trail are hard to see as the bracken gets overgrown in the summer as it’s only maintained by volunteers, but we weren’t worried about treading through bracken if the path is sound underneath. He did then also admit that this trail veers close to the cliffs at times, but the sheep walked on this trail all the time and knew when to turn round before they fell off the edge, so really it was fine if we watched where the sheep trod.

Cool, note to self, maybe all we need to do is catch a sheep to walk ahead of us like some Scottish version of a canary in the mine.

Slightly concerned that we would have to turn full on jungle warrior / sheep herder just to get as far as Inverness we did some Googling for a second opinion. It turns out the definition of “veers close to the cliffs” means “within 50cm of certain death”.

This photo is courtesy of the Silver Walker‘s blog, a man who clearly doesn’t suffer from vertigo and is considerably braver than either of us.

So today we continued to dodge vehicles on the A9 with a slight detour down stretches of the John O Groats trail that were actually safe and/or a cycle path. No cycles were caught or harmed in the making of this blog.

Distractions on the way today included the observation that granite has given way to red sandstone on this part of the Highlands, allowing plants taller than shrubbery to grow, notably raspberries in the hedgerows, in the same way we have blackberries at home. I wonder if Scottish people on holiday in Bath are currently photographing black berries with as much excitement as we picked these beauties.

We also marvelled at the fact that the roads here have textured white lines at both the edge and centre of the road, presumably to act as mini rumble strips when drivers are distracted by raspberries, gorgeous views, or aiming for walkers at the side of the road. We wondered whether the lines and the dots are made by the same machine at the same time or how it happens exactly. I’m happy for that to remain a mystery.

As for the BnB owner / wolf in sheep’s clothing, Scotland has beaten him there too: the diversity celebrating sheep still know how to rock the look, just better.

Distance – 25.3km