Shenanigans and Switchbacks: Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again Another Day. Preferebly in June.

Thursday May 21, 2026

Halkirk, Scotland

Distance traveled: 135 km Cumulative travel: 2334 km

Weather: 10-14 degrees. I was awake briefly around 4:30 am and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. By our 10:00 am departure time, it was raining pretty hard, which it continued to do through most of the day. It did finally let up around 3:00 pm and we even had enough sun for some of the roads to dry off.

As we were checking out from our charming farm-house B&B, our hostess, feeling somewhat sorry for us, offered up her living room so that we could wait out the rain, or at least, until it eased up. However, we were geared and loaded up and we wanted to get going. It looked pretty socked in, so there really was nothing to gain by waiting; we still had a destination for the day.

Despite the rain, we made a stop fairly early into the day. This was an impulse stop (my favourite kind) as Nan saw a sign for an historical spot and she suggested we check it out. It is called "Badbea", which is an old farming settlement that existed from the mid-1700s until its last resident moved away in 1911. All that remained were some footings for buildings, a monument to former residents and a long stone fence. I'm not entirely sure the fence was from the Badbea settlement or if perhaps it was more current. Badbea was a "clearance" village: residents were basically tenant farmers booted off their farms by the landowners who wanted to introduce sheep farming on their lands. It looked like a harsh existence. Fairly steep slope to build homes, and reputatably a typical strong wind coming off the water. Plus, there was a steep cliff just below the settlement and there were numerous warnings to stay clear.

Nan contemplating bird song at Badbea.

Housing foundations.

Monument to the farmers who lived there.

Sheep fence climbing up to the near by hills.

One of my greatest pleasures this entire trip had been seeing the ruins of homes, farms, monuments, boneyards, inns and castles in activly farmed areas. Imagine having a farm and walking on your property and there is evidence of past occupation that might be hundreds of years old or even a thousand? Scotland seems replete with such remains, even more so than Ireland and since we have started our travels, the further north we go, the more plentiful they are. I hope to have more such pictures on a day that is not so rainy. Plus, we saw a few today that looked like they would be interesting to visit but we couldn't see an obvious way to access them. One we dismissed when we saw the road was basically just a track through a field.

Travel was slow today with all the rain. In the afternoon, we were riding through Wick and hoping to find a spot to get a bite and out of the rain. We didn't make any special effort, such as diverting from the main street so we just pushed on. The next town/village was John O'Groat, which had a ferry terminal with a little tourist infrastructure but it didn't look all that interesting, especially the 3 pounds 50 pence parking fee. We pushed on, though I suspect Nan didn't care and would have been content with anything, so I felt obliged to come up with something in short order. As it happened, we passed a castle with a tea room so we turned in there. The castle turned out to be Castle Mey, which belongs to the Royal Family. King Charles and Camilla like to use it for 10 days during the summer months and make an annual visit. We didn't bother with a tour of the castle, the tea room was all we needed. We had soup, scones and I had a piece of chocolate cake, which I felt I deserved given the riding conditions.

View of Orkney Islands from Castle Mey

After lunch, which was about 3:00 pm, the weather let up and we had a much nicer time of it. However, my phone was having trouble keeping the satellite signal for our navigation. I lost the map a couple of times and the first couple of times it connected again on its own but the third time it couldn't recover automatically and we were riding down what was at best a "lane" through farmer's fields. Fortunatley, the last command I had said I had 5 km to go to the next junction so just just went on faith that at some point, the signal would return, which it eventually did but I had to stop the bike and fiddle with my phone to get it back.

Our destination for the next two nights is in Halkirk, about 5 km south of Thurso, the northern most point on mainland Scotland. We are staying in the Ulbster Arms Hotel, which is quite a renowned fishing hotel. In the bar, there are displays of tied flies for fishing, tied flies for sale and a map of the hotel's leased "beats". A beat is a point on a river, like a "hole" where fish live and anglers are more likely to catch fish. The hotel has a 99 year lease on 13 beats along the Thurso River and the hotel has a regular stream of anglers who come every year to fish. Two anglers are allowed on one beat at any given time and the anglers are expected to be polite and cordial to one another, including swapping places at lunch time. Fishing is generally "catch and release" though there are allowances at certain times of the year to keep one or two for a week of fishing. The beats are managed by a "Ghille" a person whose job it is to maintain order on the river and ensure that people are behaving responsibly.