#johnogroats

Day 1: Culross & Inverness

The second day of our trip began with a drive to the tip of Loch Ness. Like Inverness, everyone I know told me that Loch Ness is not really worth the trip... and they were right. My advice would be to skip Loch Ness and go instead to Loch Lomand in the Trossachs, honestly! But because we were north and because we felt like we had to, we took a few obligatory pics of the lake, my dad was disappointed that we didn’t see Nessie (I sincerely hope he was joking but to this day am not sure), and that was that. Oh and in hindsight the pics I took are pretty terrible so I won’t even share them here 😂

Embarrassingly, I had NO idea that Culloden was near Inverness... I’m not sure why I didn’t know that/why I don’t pay attention to anything, but we decided to go even though it wasn’t in our original plan. And let me tell you, it was SO WORTH IT! The museum is very interesting, the battlefield eerily beautiful... if you have any interest in Scottish history, this is a MUST! And yes, of course, there is an Outlander connection here, and like a nerd fan I took a photo of the Clan Fraser stone. #sorrynotsorry... 

Clearly I wasn't the only Outlander fan here...

...which Culloden’s gift shop capitalizes on

From Culloden we drove on to Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland. Or that was the plan, until my dad got sidetracked by Balblair distillery and decided we had to stop. We didn’t take a tour or anything, but we did a tasting- or more accurately my dad and brother did a tasting and I had a single sip of the whisky my dad ended up buying. Needless to say, I drove after that, lol. I’m not a whisky fan but even I have to admit that this was excellent, and it’s not owned by one of the big corporate stooges so win-win! 

Dunrobin looks like an actual Disney princess castle, absolutely beautiful. The gardens are exquisite and the castle is situated on the water. Just breathtaking. While touring the grounds, we saw a fantastic presentation of some of the birds that are kept on the estate. The trainer showed us how he trains and rehabilitated a peregrine falcon along with two other birds. Not usually my thing but it was fascinating! 

Me in my Cait jeans, gazing longingly at the castle...

...and posing in front of it pretending to be royalty. My brother was so embarrassed taking these pictures of me (also please note how quickly the sky went from blue to grey)

But let me give you a fair warning: DO NOT VISIT THE VICTORIAN MUSEUM ON THE CASTLE GROUNDS. There is a sign on the door that says something like “Warning: Large animal heads, some visitors may be offended”, but idiot me thought large animal heads meant, like, really huge deer heads or something. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Because what greets you as you walk through the front door is the neck and head of a fucking giraffe, with an elephant head on the wall just behind (the rest of the walls are filled with any number of deer, fish, moose, etc. etc.). I’m not a vegetarian or anything but I found it EXTREMELY upsetting and was disturbed for the rest of the visit. And other than that sign you get zero warning or indication of what’s inside, which I think is a huge failing on their part. 

We then drove the rest of the way to John O’Groats, one of the northernmost points on mainland UK. This area of Scotland was pretty much all of our favorite from the entire trip... we spent two nights at the most AMAZING self-catering apartment, I cannot recommend this place enough, it’s pricey but 150% worth it. I’m already dream planning another visit here... 

We stayed in the white building but each of the six structures has flats you can rent!

Day 1: Culross & Inverness

Day 2: Loch Ness, Culloden, Dunrobin Castle & John O’ Groats

This day was BUSY so stay with me folks. In hindsight, how we smushed all of this in I have no idea.......

We drove from our flat on John O’Groats to Castle Mey, just a few miles down the road. For those who don’t know, Castle Mey was the Queen Mother’s home in Scotland (her purchase of Mey was featured in the Crown, but they filmed elsewhere). 

Unfortunately you can’t take pictures inside the castle, but it’s lovely and homey, and the guides in each room know SO MUCH about the Queen Mother and how she lived here. Apparently she had a great sense of humour- be sure to look out for the Nessie hidden in the first room! It’s fascinating and I can’t recommend visiting Castle Mey enough. Also, shout out to the Major in the dining room who personally worked for the Queen Mother, and who brought his sweet black lab to work with him.

We also toured her garden and animal centre, which I really enjoyed (and was able to take pictures of, woo hoo)

BABIES

After having lunch at Castle Mey, we drove another couple miles down the road to Dunnet Bay Distillers to try some of their Rock Rose gin. We were too early for a tour, but we tasted some of what they had on offer. I’ll be honest, I have a hard time distinguishing between gins without adding tonic, but this tasted nice to me. Plus the bottles are SO pretty that I bought one to take home with me. 

Because this is Scotland, it was another day, another whisky for us. This time we stopped at Old Pultney’s distillery in Wick, and took the distillery tour. Unfortunately we were there during their quiet time, when they shut down production in order to clean and repair, so we didn’t see any whisky being made. But the tour was very interesting anyway and I enjoyed the whisky (even if I couldn’t taste the sea saltiness that makes it unique). And again, NOT owned by Diagio, so yay for helping out the little(er) guys! 

And thus started our great lighthouse adventure... my brother got it into his head that he really wanted to visit a lighthouse, not an outrageous idea given that we were on the coast. But he hadn’t done any research as to where they could be, so we blindly typed them into our GPS and just went for it. This led us NOT to a lighthouse, but to the ruins of Castle Sinclair, which was pretty spectacular. You can’t really see it from the road, and you can’t even really tell how amazing it is until you’re almost in it. It is very much a ruin, but as long as you’re careful you can explore all the way down to the little cove at the base of the castle. In true Scottish fashion it started to rain while we were there but it was completely worth the detour!

We then tried to find another lighthouse, and for the life of me I can’t remember where this one was... I think it was called the John O’Groats lighthouse, maybe, but it’s still a ways off John O’Groats itself. Regardless, you also couldn't go inside this lighthouse so instead we took a short walk around the coastline and said hi to some sheep. 

The little white dots in the rocks were birds all cuddled up sleeping, so cute!