We had a horribly early start at 7.30 am.
We drove some lovely countryside on the way to John O'Groates.
Heading North from Inveresk, we travelled through small towns, and villages. The first thing we noticed was the land was lush green grass, with no trees. It has apparently been extremely wet (the wettest in 100 years) so the farm machinery was all out busy making silage. It was also obvious were people had been digging peat, although peat takes hundreds of tears to develop there is plenty of it and people are allowed to take it for free. It used as fuel for fires.
We stopped off at Wick, for a comfort stop, it was around 3 hours travelling.
Wick allegedly has Britain's smallest street, being only 5 foot long. Ebenezer Street really would confuse the Councils in Tasmania, as it is also located on a bend in the road....
The word Wick comes from the Viking or Norse word 'Vik' which means bay.
Duncansby Head was our next stop, we had a lovely clear view, but donned our warm jackets, as the chill factor was zero. The incuts that have eroded into the cliffs (Sclaites Geo) make excellent nesting areas for birds, we were fortunate to again see a Puffin (just 1) and a Kittiwake chick (a fancy seagull)


The dramatic cliffs, and "The Stacks" Legend has it two giant vikings attempted to come a shore to destroy Scotland, and a witch turned them both into stone before they were able to make it, unfortunately she also turned her dog into stone as well, hence the two large rocks, and the smaller one closer to shore.
We then travelled to "John O'Groats" the place marked as the most Northerly point of England. It was just as inspiring as "Lands End" but thankfully no where near as touristy or busy.
Steven looking lost.
We then boarded (or rather the bus boarded with us on it) the ferry from near John O'Groates and headed towards The Orkney's. We had a very smooth crossing, even though we had been told it was a treacherous stretch where the Atlantic meets with the North Sea.
After arriving at St Margaret's Hope on the Island of South Ronaldsay, we were in the Orkney Islands. We headed straight for the Tomb Of the Eagles. This amazing site is looked after by two ladies who's father made the discovery. They were both characters. Their father Ronnie Simison in the 1950's while out searching for rocks to construct a fence, noticed some unusually placed rocks. On further investigation he found a collection of bones and artefact's, (over 16,000 human bones, and over 700 from birds, mainly White Tailed Eagles ) placed there some 5,000 years ago. He contacted the local authorities, who showed no interest in his find, so then later conducted the excavation himself.



There was some lovely scenery from the cliff tops around the tomb, the walk to the tomb was about one mile through the open fields.

After leaving the tomb we drove on through the Islands, some of which are now joined by a concrete block bridge, that was constructed during WWII by Italian prisoners of war. It was actually to keep German U boats out of the bay but as it was against the Geneva Convention to use prisoners of war in any war effort, Churchill named them bridges and also named them after himself.
The Italian war prisoners had no Church so they were given two Nissan huts which they joined together and created the Italian Chapel.
After the Chapel we went to our accommodation for the night, it was very nice indeed.
We are spending the next two nights in Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkney's.
We explored the town quickly and found a nice pub with the best food and pretty good pints.





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