Day 106 Helmsdale to Wick

 

 Date: Sunday 22^nd July 2012   Distance: 36.89 Miles

 

We had breakfast at 8 am after a bit of a restless night- we hadn’t noticed extra pillows in the cupboard. It was a nice breakfast and the bike had been under our plastic cover in the garden overnight. Other cyclists staying there were doing Land’s End to John o Groats. We left at 9 and in one hour we had gone just 5 miles. Despite this and the many hills we got to Wick by 3 at an average of 9.7 miles an hour over the 37 miles.

 

We had left Helmsdale for 3 miles ”up“ of lovely views. It was just the A9 today as there were no other possibilities. The first place we could stop was Dunbeath.  It was a 13 per cent up and down at Berriedale, just before and after. Achieving 42 mile an hour we stopped at the bottom to be hailed by a driver who said I had dropped something on the way down. After looking through the bags we decided it must have been my fluorescent pink cycle clips. We decided not to go back for them!

 

The Discovery centre at Dolbeath had a coffee machine and toilets so we paid £2 and £2.50 to go round it. It is a modern minimalist museum but artistically presented, especially the room dedicated to a local writer Gunn who wrote “Silver Darlings”. The floor and walls depicted places – the floor as a map- in his writing. There was a stone with a partial cross, said to be Pictish, though it didn’t have the same beauty and wasn’t so deeply etched as others we have seen. It was set in a shrine inside the building which demonstrates local pride. There was also a stone found by schoolgirls that had a series of runes thought to be Nordic.

 

A bit up the A9 on the right hand side is thatched Laidhay Caithness Croft (18th century) including a stable, house and byre, fully restored and open during the Summer, though we were there in July and it was closed. Beside this is the cafe where we had our lunch. It is owned by the licensed restaurant nearer to Dunbeath, with fantastic sea views but it only does main meals.

 

The hills still kept coming for a bit but then it plateaued out and it was gentle undulations into Wick. It had been cloudy all day with occasional outbreaks of blue. At times the clouds came right down over the hills. It rained as soon as we reached our B and B, Harbour House at 3! Arriving early in Wick, we’d fitted a pint in at the Weatherspoon before installing the bike in parts at the bottom of the B and B’s stairs of the lofty terraced townhouse.

 

Our room had a breakfast bar (breakfast served in the room) looking over the harbour out to sea. The spotlights are coloured and with touch switches. The shower has extra low level spouts and the sink’s water cascades over a glass plate. Next door to our room is a cinema screen for DVDs and a snooker table. Luckily no one comes in to disturb us and we sleep fairly well in the massive bed.

 

We watched Bradley Wiggins take the Tour de France and Mark Cavendish win the stage. On the way to the town centre we passed a cannon used as a warning for fog. There were no “open all hours” shops but plenty of night club type places and some drive-by bars. A vehicle made of the front end of a motorbike and the back end of a mini was constantly doing the town circuit. This configuration meant the rider didn’t need a helmet and he was flaunting the fact over and over again.

We stood by the river watching fish plop at the surface. Someone came to talk to us from an old folks’ kitchen. She said the fish get stuck when the water level is low and they hadn’t had much rain this summer unlike England. Bob saw a brown fish jump a foot in the air most likely by all accounts to be a young salmon.

 

Dinner was good value for money in the Weatherspoon and Bob liked the Peterswell real ale.