We left Dunbeath yesterday with a load of midges crowded round the front of our pod, like kids around the door of Macdonald’s, excitedly awaiting a happy meal. Mark went out into the breech to empty the bin and was duly attacked. Fortunately we are armed with Smidge, so these pose no more mortal danger now we know how they lurk.

So, today, we left Selkie House and our lovely host, in the broad sunshine of Helmsdale harbour, believing that nothing but gentle rolling hills awaited us……..

Selkie House is a kitch, knick-knack filled gem, seemingly frozen in the 1980s, where the landlady not only provides cupcake shaped soaps with walnuts on top (5 of them, by the mirror in the bathroom, not to be mistaken for the six, lilac, potentially bath bombs on the window ledge), but also provides a huge home-cooked breakfast that really does fuel you for a long day of walking.

We’d spent the night before at the Bannockburn Inn and more specifically their restaurant, The Tartan Lounge. Yep, it really is:

Here they lived up to our expectations of proving that haggis can go with almost everything, e.g. stuffed into a chicken breast to create (a probably very unhealthy) chicken Rob Roy.

So with a huge supper and a huge breakfast inside us, we were ready EVEN for the John O Groats trail (JOGT). Like treasure hunters on a mission, we found the tiny JOGT signpost, close to the impossibly beautiful beach nearby: a steak of liquid gold, drawing us near the inky blue water.

Like treasure hunters on a mission, we found the tiny JOGT signpost, close to the impossibly beautiful beach nearby: a steak of liquid gold, drawing us near the inky blue water.

Oh no, wait a minute, it wasn’t the nearby beach that was liquid gold, that was further up the path……

We then endured the first quest, because farmers around here apparently do not want people to exercise their “right to roam” on the JOGT. So one particular farmer has surrounded a field, growing precisely nothing but bracken, with a fence within 50cm of the edge you can’t walk on, supplying just enough space to squeeze past as long as you like bracken a lot.

Fortunately, bracken does not scare us as we have walked through a LOT of it today as well as long grass. So a new activity has been introduced to our days: looking for ticks. No Lyme disease so far…..

Onwards we continued along a lovely sandy, but very skinny path, navigable safely only by catwalk models who have spent all their adult lives only putting each foot directly in front of the one behind, in very skinny pointy shoes. Trail trainers on one of us is not quite the same move.

We trod carefully, however, and avoided this trip hazard only for both of us to misstep on sand banks beside two small rivers we had to cross. No big deal thankfully.

Mark has been on constant alert for anything that can twist ankles on this trip. For the 35 years we have known each other I have badly twisted my ankle twice: once, paintballing on our combined stag and hen weekend and the second time, by stepping awkwardly in the inca ruins near Cusco. Mark on the other hand has jarred his ankle, by miscalculating the height of a kerb, once, but he kept running anyway. So to be precise, Mark has been on high alert for anything that I can twist my ankle on. For example, the partially obscured drainage channels every 10 feet or so along the A9 have presented many opportunities to do this.

Likewise so did the next stage of the JOGT, where I risked life and twisted ankles at the point where the web page says “the path is squeezed between the sea and the railway, making for some slightly challenging terrain”. This image is the only one I felt safe enough to photograph, the others were considerably worse. Mark’s nonchalance at standing on the pointy edges of skinny concrete blocks at the top of a 15 foot rocky drop should be ignored entirely, he has no fear.

Having survived that section, the rest of the trail into Brora is basically a stroll down Brora beach, where, with our instincts honed for danger, it was only a baby seal and a dolphin that we saw dead on the beach (I kid you not, but I’m sparing you Mark’s photo of a dead, blackened dolphin). The only points of mild peril were when Mark had to dodge waves on the incoming tide (actually quite funny to watch and the trainers are drying now) and I was dive bombed by a gull who either clawed or pecked my head. I didn’t lift my eyeballs up close enough to either its feet or bill to check which got me. So, with our instincts honed even further and carrying sticks to ward off divebombing gulls, we made it to Brora itself. We even caught sight of a couple of live seals having a swim in this heavenly environment.

At the end of the beach, the clouds and the tide came in, so we decided not to drown off the headland, but head for the 19th hole of the nearby golf course hotel.

The rest of the ~30km / 19 mile walk today, dodging cars on the A9 into Golspie was remarkable by its uneventfulness, it seems that it is only Scottish nature that tried to kill us today.

This might also be a good time to answer the question I’m sure you have in your head, “why is Mark always ahead of Janet? Why are there so many images here with Mark’s behind in them?” You may know me quite well and know how I feel about Mark’s arse and how happy I am to spend much of my day able to see it in front of me. However, it is also because Mark is wearing a GoPro and is videoing the walk each day, which you can see here. Enjoy. If you enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed fish and chips on far too many occasions from very northerly restaurants, which are generally much better than those down south, you will be rich indeed.

No ankles were harmed in the making of this blog.  

Distance – 30.3km