Scotland III: Wick and the north

After braving a whole dining room full of grumpy old people to get my breakfast, I left tiny Castletown for Dunnet Head, the actual northermost point of "mainland" Britain. Castletown has a small harbor two minutes drive away, and this area was actually a major producer and exporter of flagstone back in the 19th century. New York and Sydney were paved with these stones:



The place also has nice, sandy beaches:



Dunnet Head, which is farther north than John o' Groats. It's damn windy up there. The land you see way out at sea is the southern tip of the Orkneys:



There's a lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula:



On the way there I passed a herd of Highland cattle, locally known as "Shaggy Coos". I find the appeareance of these animals hilarious and I love them to bits. With hair like that you just know these cows would be playing guitar in teenage rock bands if they had opposable thumbs and a brain slightly bigger than a walnut (all experience with actual rock bands tells us that this, and a pulse is all it takes).

Yes, the wee ones ARE that cute:



The hard rock version of Bambi:




After Dunnet I drove to John o' Groats, which is considered the northermost point in "popular culture". When illustrating that something applies to all of Great Britain for example, one would use the expression "From Land's End to John o' Groats". The place itself is nothing to see, just an ugly, utterly charmless clump of buildings. I didn't even stop the car, just pressed on south towards Wick.

It was on the outskirts of Wick I made the mistake of filling petrol at a local Tesco. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary while driving the last couple of miles into town, where I got some maps and brochures at the tourist information. I then drove across town to the Heritage Center, which has won several awards for its exhibits. At this point, all was still well.

I spent about an hour wandering around the huge building, taking in the various displays about life in the north. In Wick it was all about the herring. In the 19th century more than a thousand boats fished here in the summers, and this little town took in about 1/3 of the total herring catch in Scotland. The sea giveth, and the sea taketh away, however. During one horrible August storm, 18 boats and 37 people were lost.


This wall/corner/door is actually formally a street in itself, and is recognized by Guiness as the shortest street in the world at 206 cm. The building has the address 1 Ebenezer Place and was built in the 1880s.



An old classroom. The cane, the cane *droolz*



The little sods got medals for good work. Loudly and clearly rewarding achievements... now there's a novel idea for the commie bastards running the Norwegian school system...



This plaque from an old Norwegian company caught my eye:




How sweet to be an idiot

Afterwards I went out to my car again, and it was here tragedy struck: I could not get the damn thing to start. At the Tesco I'd just assumed the car ran on petrol, since no one at the rental company had specified it was a diesel (when I've rented diesel cars previously they always took care to point this out), but now an icy suspicion was dawning on me. I started looking carefully around the car and inside the door there was a small paper thingy with specifications. It read, in tiny, tiny letters: DIESEL. At that very moment I happened to look at my car key (who the fuck reads what's on their car keys anyway???). The key brick read in large, friendly letters: DIESEL.
Long story short: Since I had no signal on my cell phone I got the incredibly nice people at the museum to help me, and after a little over an hour a towing car came. After some further complications due to a distinct lack of communication between the insurance company and the driver of said towing car, I was taken to the local Ford dealer's workshop.

Maybe I misinterpreted some of what had been said, maybe I was just being paranoid (and heaven knows I'm utterly ignorant about cars), but I was really, really scared I'd fucked up the engine beyond repair. I was having nightmare visions of having to stay in Wick for days, or having to get the car taken all the way to Edinburgh for repair, running up four digit bills in the process. Imagine my relief when they told me it shouldn't be more than a few tenners and not more than an hour's work. The total bill came to slightly less than £30, plus the value of the gas on the tank, which had to be emptied - another £70. Still, this came as a HUGE relief to me and I was positively giddy with joy when I left Wick.

Also on the bright side, was that I got to talk to several of the very,very nice people who work at the heritage center. Again, one of the resident little old ladies had taken me for an American, but when I informed her I was Norwegian she beamed at me and said "ooooh, well you're doubly welcome then!" I talked to several of them at length, and they all confirmed they felt as Norwegian as anything. They were certainly not Highlanders, nor did they have any warm feelings for the Celtic culture or language. They were people of the north, and they were proud of their Norse heritage.