Making Plans and Heading North

30/10/2024

We had been watching the weather forecast for a little while. Being British we are obsessed with the weather anyway, but this was a level above the usual, with perusal of long range forecasts across a number of providers to see how consistent they were being. The reason being that we were still keen to go to Orkney, but only if we had a reasonably calm weather window. There was no point if we were just going to be hunkered down in the van avoiding wind and rain.

The weather was looking good for at least three weeks. So our minds were made up and we booked the ferry. We chose to use Pentland Ferries because the crossing is shorter and Gills Bay, the departure point, was closer. Price-wise this was a marginally more expensive option as Pentland Ferries change extra for a bike rack, whereas Northlink, the other provider, just charge by total length.  We made a plan for our journey to Gill’s Bay and a more tentative plan for visiting the islands, based on staying in campsites while I worked and off grid parking in between.

Golspie Parking

We were in Golspie when we made our plans, a village on the east coast with a couple of parking options. Our first night was spent in the Highland Council car park where we occupied the one OSB (Overnight Sleeping Bay).

We had a small job to do while we were parked up. The window blind for the kitchen was refusing to retract which was very frustrating. It’s not the first time we’ve had issues with the window blinds so we’re quite proficient now. We popped out the screw covers on the window surround and took out the whole unit, surround and blind. It was obvious what the problem was. Everything was covered in greasy gunk from twenty years of cooking (or maybe just from our eight years of cooking, I’m not sure how much real living went on before our ownership). We removed the pins that keep the springs in place so that we could roll out the blind and give it and all of the parts of the mechanism a good clean. For good measure I cleaned the newly exposed parts of the wall too. When everything was clean and dry we had a little spray around with silicon spray, rolled the blind back up, fiddled around until we had it all properly re-tensioned (by far the most tricky part of the process) and got it back in place. Working perfectly.

Once that job was complete we took a short walk around the town, along the beach and back through the town just to stretch our legs.

Golspie from the east end of the seafront. Duke of Sutherland monument on ‘the Ben’ in the background

Camping at Golspie

We had quite a noisy night at the parking spot. It was close to the road on the corner and the noise of trucks slowing down for the corner woke us up several times. We had already booked the campsite up the road for the next night so hoped it would be sufficiently far from the road to allow us to sleep better.

We were told we could arrive when we liked at the campsite so we set off first thing. The campsite has toilets but no showers and all of the other usual facilities including electric. All on gravel hard standing.

I got a good day’s work in and Paul fixed our wheel arch which had suffered a little knock a few days previously and come apart along a previously repaired crack. That makes it sound like it was an easy repair, but this was Paul’s second time trying to fix and reinforce it. Luckily this was a successful repair.

That afternoon we were joined, yet again, by several hire vans. It was a noisy sociable evening. There were two families with kids who were travelling together and continually moving between vans. A group of Indian guys, two of whom were working in the UK and the other two visiting from India. And a couple with their dog who kept popping over to ask Paul how to find bits on their van, some of which we had no idea about. We explained that our van was quite old so didn’t have things like an electric step.

We had a much better nights sleep at the campsite. Either the noise of passing traffic was quieter or we were tired from the evening before.

Highland Wildcat Trails

Golspie is home to a mountain bike trail centre up behind the village, the Highland Wildcat trails. Of all the things we could have chosen to do in Golspie, this was the one we didn’t want to miss. The following day we left the campsite and drove under the railway bridge to Rhives parking for the trails. As it was mid week we had the car park and trails to ourselves.

Under the railway bridge. No need to worry.

We wanted to try the blue run first, just to see the difficulty level. It was mostly just forest track with a short section of single track down near the other car park. Disappointed, we made our way back to the red run. This was much better, not too difficult but with a few features that made it a good progression ride for me. Most of the steps and drop offs had an easier or more difficult option, making it even more flexible.  Plus we could break it up into shorter sections with plenty of ways to go back up and re-do features. We really enjoyed this, so much so that by the time we had finished playing on the red downhill we were too tired go back up to the top of Ben Bhraggie and the Duke of Sutherland Monument. We’ll have to leave that for another time, maybe by then I will be ready to do the black trail all the way from the top (I doubt it).

Getting ready for a bit of downhill

Overnight at Reiss Sands

From Golspie it was then time to push further north. Despite knowing that we were heading for Orkney we felt a bit odd pushing on so quickly and missing out large sections of this northern part of the east coast. We’ve definitely go things to come back for.

Our next stop was Reiss Sands where we stayed in yet another Highland Council OSB. The car park was popular with dog walkers who came and went that evening and the following morning.

We took a walk along the bay towards Ackergill Tower, a 15th century tower house that has obviously been refurbed into a very nice hotel.

Ackergill Tower – a 15th Century tower house plus multiple outbuildings of different ages. It looked very nice.

Past the tower is the tiny hamlet of Ackergillshore where there is a lifeboat station. Although it’s no longer in use it appears to be the oldest Scottish lifeboat station still standing and the small harbour is very picturesque. We watched a kayaker being dropped off and kitting up for a paddle before turning around and making our way back to Bertie.

Beyond the harbour we could see Castle Sinclair Girnigoe (what a great name) and Noss Head lighthouse

Across the bay in the direction of Old Keiss Castle we could see a lot of blue lights, something was obviously going on with several emergency service vehicles and a helicopter in attendance. Sadly we later heard that someone had fallen from the cliff and died.

Sunrise at Reiss Bay