The Birds

Friday May 22, 2026

Halkirk, Scotland

Distance traveled: 145 km. Cumulative distance: 2479 km

Weather: A whole lot better than yesterday! The day started pretty sunny and a balmy 18 degrees! By the end, it had clouded over and we had a few sprinkles of rain but nothing earth shattering. Temperature range 16 - 19 degrees.

Damn birds.

This is bad enough. But it was the SECOND time today! When I went outside this morning to get the bike ready for our day, a bird turd just like this one was on the bike. I cleaned it up with a big wad of toilet paper. When we got home late this afternoon, we parked the bike close to the hotel entrance. I was inside a half hour and when I went out, THIS!

Because it had rained so much yesterday, we really didn't see much. We didn't even have many pictures because the camera lens always had water on it and the pictures reflected that. So we decided to back track somewhat and see some of the scenery along the north coast, riding back to John O'Groats. Which is the actual name of a place. However, we were a little low on gas and there is a convenience store there that sells gasoline and diesel, so we filled up. The gas tank on this bike isn't big and the range is about 320 km. A little light for touring I find, as I have to top it up every day. With that out of the way, we went to find ourselves some lunch. We asked at the convenience store and he suggested the hotel just a very short ride - wallking distance really - and across the street. We went in there and it was a bar like you would see in any small town in North America. A pool table, slot/poker machines and NO CUSTOMERS. Not even a staff member for that matter. I called out "hello" and somebody came from the kitchen. I asked if they had any food and she told me "no", even though I could see a couple of flats of eggs from the bar. They don't serve lunch, except on weekends. But she suggested we go to the place I refused to eat yesterday, down by the ferry terminal. With parking for three pounds 50 pence, ie about $7.

It really was little more than a cafe, though they did serve Scotch, amongst other things. They had a chalk board menu and one of the items was "Seafood Salad" and I thought, PERFECT. 

You can see the menu board above the kitchen: "Prawns, salmon, herring, mackeral"

Well, I guess I'm just naive. I was thinking I would get a nice fresh fish salad and I would have a good, healthy lunch. The prawns were canned baby shrimp like you see on pizza (if you ever order that!). The salmon was smoked salmon. The mackeral was smoked mackeral and the herring, you can probably see where this is going, pickled herring. Not exactly the fresh fish extravaganza I had envisioned. Oh, and served with fries. 

From lunch, we went to see some "stacks", out near the Duncansby Lighthouse. This is one of the iconic places you see on all kinds of posters and promotional pieces.

You can see they ARE stacked!

Puffins.

Seagulls nesting.

There were a lot of people here to see the sights. Fortunatelly, there is a lot of area for them to spread out, though the tiny parking lot was full. Unless you had a motorcycle. 

We had seen some indications of castles throrugh the clouds and rain yesterday and at lunch I had asked the T-800 for which castles were close by. The T-800 remembered that we were motorcycling and offered some other motorcycle-friendly rides in the area! What the T-800 didn't offer was castles we could access. I had picked two: the Bucholie Castle and Old Keiss Castle. Unfortunately, both are guarded by private property with plenty of signage saying "keep out" etc. They are probably accessible by walking great distances along the shoreline but for practical purposes, not really accessible to people in a whole lot of motorcycle gear. We could see Old Keiss Castle from the road, though. Adjacent to it was a HUGE manor currently undergoing some renovations. That place was also off limits.

The manor under renovation.

Old Keiss Castle is just to the left of the manor. 

 If you are feeling particularly nerdy, see the castles here: https://share.google/6ozdpkiaabwx6gjjq and here: Old Keiss Castle https://share.google/I4EUYq9WFYyaf5CME

Our consolation prize was to stop at Nybster Broch (pronunced "broke", like we will be after this trip). A broch is an iron age structure which may have housed residents, remains, or was a stronghold for defence. There are around 500 in Scotland and while many have been excavated, their purpose is not entirely understood. Even though we didn't walk all the way to the ruins, it was still a very nice spot for a break. And there were some monuments erected to honour a past archeologists.