On what proved to be another grey, windy and occasionally wet day, my objective was simple: Having stood on the north-western tip of the United Kingdom yesterday, to explore Scotland's north coast and make my way to what many people mistakenly believe is its north-eastern tip, John O'Groats.
NC500 Day 4 – Durness to John O'Groats
There was a 100 miles of driving ahead of me today along a predominately wild and remote coastline. It was also, looking at the map, a slightly sad occasion for a lover of wild and remote places like me. As by the end of the day the last of the single track roads would be well and truly behind me and there was an inescapable feeling that I was slowly heading back towards the rat race. But first, less that a mile up the road from Durness, there was Smoo cave.
Smoo Cave
Another amazing place on an amazing journey. Smoo cave is a combined sea and freshwater cave consisting of three chambers, that is unique to the UK and boasts the largest sea cave entrance in Britain, being some 40m high and 15m wide. The entrance itself is located at the end of a 600m tidal gorge, once part of the cave, that has now collapsed. This means the sea rarely reaches the cave today. While the inner chambers and connecting passages are formed as the result of freshwater dissolving carbonate dolostones, along geological fault lines.
The sea cave and first of the freshwater chambers are accessible 24/7, but to fully access the cave its necessary to take a guided tour in a small boat. Which is well worth the small fee asked for it.
I arrived early in the morning about an hour or so before Stuart, an experienced caver who runs the tours, arrived and had the cave all to myself. A truly eerie experience wandering though the glommy interior listening to the wind moan and groan through the blow-holes above me. Its not hard to see why it was once believed to be the abode of spirits who guarded the entrance to the nether world. It said the three holes found in the roof of the cave today were put there by Devil during a confrontation with The first Lord of Reay (Donald Mackay, Chief of Clan Mackay).
A covered walkway leads you into the flooded second chamber refereed to as the waterfall cave through which the Allt Smoo normally plunges in a roaring 20m waterfall. However, as Stuart later informed us, it hadn't rained for 7 weeks, unheard of in this part of Scotland, and the waterfall had dried up something that visitors to the cave seldom experience. There's a healthy population of brown trout in the cave or as Stuart prefers to call them when showing Americans around Scottish piranha.
The trip to the third and final cave is a memorable experience and probably the only time I've ever had to limbo under a rocky arch in an inflatable dingy. The hard-hats are definitely not just for show on this trip. Once the limbo is over, a short walk along a passage leads to the third and final chamber.
Evidence of human habitation has been found here, soot marks the flowstone formations at the back of the cave and hazelnut charcoal has been found on the floor. As well as Neolithic, Norse and Iron Age artifacts, and it is thought that usage may extend back to the Mesolithic age.
A sump in the base of the final chamber suggests that its part of a much larger cave complex and has been dived to distance of 40m, but silt and peat make further investigation impossible via this route. The catchment area of water that flows into the cave covers some 10 sq miles and when dye was dropped in Allt Smoo it took 5 days to reach the sump, suggesting that a large underground lake or cave system is waiting to be discovered.
Something our guide Stuart continues to search for and hopes one day to discover, a cave that no human has set foot in for 6,000 years. It worth remembering that 6,000 years ago the water table was lower and the climate warmer, with the peat having only formed in the last 4,000 years. Who knows what artefacts he might find if he uncovers the hidden chambers of Smoo cave?
After Smoo cave it was very much a journey from the prehistoric to the atomic age, Dounreay.
Dounreay
Dounreay is hard to miss as your drive along the north coast, its round white reactor containment vessel looming up out of the gloom. Originally the site of a castle (now a ruin), since 1950s it has been the site of two nuclear establishments, one for the development of prototype fast breeder reactors, the other a submarine reactor testing facility, both now in the process of being decommissioned.
The decommissioning work began in 2005. Removal of all waste from the site is currently expected to take until the late 2070s and the end-point of the project is scheduled for 2300. The total cost of decommissioning is estimated at around £2.9 billion. There's a rich irony in the fact that at least two wind farms are clearly visible from Dounreay today.
Its not all nuclear however. Dounreay was part of the battlefield of a bloody battle between the Scottish clans in 1437, the battle of Sandside Chase. It even served as an airfield in WWII, although was never pressed into active service.
John O'Groats
The final stop of the day was quite literally the 'end of the road', although not as many believe the north eastern tip of of the United Kingdom, that honour belongs to nearby Duncansby Head. So the next time someone shows you a picture of themselves under its iconic signpost or outside the multi-coloured hotel at the end of the world remember to ask them if they visited Duncansby Head.
I'd hoped to walk their after parking up at the John O'Groats campsite, but found myself beating a hasty retreat for a dry change of clothes after ending up waist deep in some very wet undergrowth. Instead I opted to make it my first stop tomorrow.
I did however learn from my experiences the previous night, ignoring the wealth of vacant pitches on the seafront, I retreated to field at the rear of the campsite. Thus ensuring I had a whole field, a very large camper van and a hedge to shelter me from the Arctic winds blowing off the North Sea and enjoyed a very cosy nights sleep!
So that's day 5 of the NC500, a slightly surreal experience all in, as the north cost marks a significant change in the character of the journey. After several days with the rugged folds of west coasts landscape and the every changing mountains as your constant companions, they suddenly take a back seat. Instead I found myself driving through a wild wilderness of peat bogs and moorlands falling away toward the North Sea.
So after a spooky cave, a forlorn reactor and having quite literally reached the end of the road, what would tomorrow bring? Would the final day of the NC500 see me out with a bang or a whimper?
Skippy goes to Scotland Index
Part 1 Getting there
Part 2 North Coast 500 Inverness to Applecross
Part 3 North Coast 500 Applecross to Ullapool
Part 4 North Coast 500 Ullapool to Lochinver
Part 5 North Coast 500 Lochinver to Durness
Part 6 North Coast 500 Durness to John O'Groats
Part 7 North Coast 500 John O'Groats to Inverness
Part 8 The Jounrey Home (Samye Ling Monastery)
Postscript