John O'Groats to Land's End - Day 002 - Wick to Lybster

Day: 002

Date: Thursday, 02 June 2022

Start:  Wick

Finish:  Lybster

Daily Kilometres:  32

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  74

Weather:  Cool, breezy and sunny

Accommodation:  Guest House

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Porridge, toast & jam/honey, breakfast biscuit

  Lunch:  Egg and bacon sandwich

  Dinner:  Fish and chips/hamburger and chips

Aches:  Dave - exhausted, sore legs and feet.  Julie - sore feet

Highlight:  Julie getting to Lybster in time to buy some drinks (store closed at 8pm) and take-out dinner.

Lowlight:  Neither of us will care if we never have to climb over another barbed wire fence wearing our packs.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

After a late night we didn’t leave our accommodation until just before 8am, and bought some supplies for the day from a store in town on our way out.  It was another fabulous day, matched by the coastal scenery.  Initially, we passed alongside the picturesque Wick harbour before climbing to the cliff tops.

The trail wasn’t too bad and we enjoyed watching the precariously perched gulls on the sheer cliff faces while, in the clear green ocean below, cormorants(?) ducked and dived.  Thirteen kilometres out to sea, massive wind turbines were clearly visible, slowly turning in the breezy conditions.  We passed the ruins of Wick castle, and then the ruins of several old stone farmhouses, wondering about the lives of those who lived there all those years ago.

As the day wore on, the condition of the trail deteriorated, which was a pity as the scenery continued to be magnificent.  Our pace slowed, partly because of my fatigue and partly because of the difficult trail.  Where we could see it, and it often disappeared, it was overgrown and thigh high in grass and nettles.  It was narrow, squeezed between farm fences and the cliff edge, and was very uneven.  You could never tell when you were going to put your foot in an unseen hole.

Sometimes, we chose to walk inside the farm fences, where the ground was easier, but only relatively.  We probably weren’t supposed to be there, and it came with its own problems since we had to frequently climb barbed wire fences into new paddocks.  Navigation was an issue and we often found that the few trail markers diverged from the GPX track we had downloaded.  One time, we encountered a woman near a remote house who explained that we were on private property, although our GPX had led us there.

After anticipating an early finish when we set out in the morning, our expectations were steadily lowered as the day wore on.  From about 4pm, we decided to stick to the difficult cliff-top trail, having had our fill of climbing barbed wire fences, but this further slowed our pace, compounded by some very steep and challenging descents and ascents to cross narrow gorges. 

Julie was constantly waiting for me and, around 6:30pm, we decided to send the athlete on ahead to the small stretched-out village of Lybster to try and get some food and drink before the town store closed.  She did an excellent job, buying some drinks and then finding the only place in town, an up-market pub, to order some take-out food for dinner.  I arrived in town about 30 minutes after her, around 8:00pm, and we found our way to our accommodation, happy the day was over, and happy to have food and drink.

I have been disappointed in how difficult the trail was today, at least for the afternoon section.  It has been very hard to hike at a good pace, and we met a number of hikers today, all aiming for less than half of our daily kilometres.  I was, perhaps, naive, though I know this trail is much tougher than what we will encounter after Inverness.  It’s definitely a work in progress, more of a route than a trail.  The guy in the town store said they are worried that inexperienced hikers will try the trail, not knowing how rough and close to the dangerous cliff-tops it is.

Because it is holiday season and accommodation is difficult to find in the tourist areas, I have booked our accommodation for the next three weeks.  That means we have to hit our targets each day.  Tomorrow’s planned leg was 39km, but the trail website says that much of it will be the same as for the last section today.  We will be sad to do it, but I think we may hike the road instead of the cliff-tops to reach our goal of Helmsdale.  South of there, the trail looks better and we will then rejoin it.