Day 15: Bettyhill to John O'Groats

And so we've made it...

Cycling distance 50.7 miles

Total cycling distance: 1,018 miles

A relatively short day again but we still decided to get on our way by 930 in order to finish our final day in good time.

The first 15 miles or so in the overcast but warm conditions were pretty hard going with plenty of hills as we made our way across our final county boundary from Sutherland into Caithness.

The easterly route across the north coast of Scotland afforded some more spectacular remote views until we passed the huge ugly Durness the nuclear power station.

By 1pm, we arrived in Thurso with just 20 miles to go to John O'Groats. By this time, the overcast conditions had turned to beautiful sunshine and we enjoyed a sandwich feeling a bit surreal about having only a couple more hours of cycling left. One last stock upon provisions and a bottle of champagne and we set off slowly into a strong headwind.

Arrived finally into John O'Groats shortly after 4pm and it felt pretty surreal to actually be there and a bit of an anticlimax to be honest as there's nothing much to see! Similar to Lands end, they'd created a tourist attraction with no attraction.

Had our mandatory ripoff photograph in front of the signpost and cracked open the bottle of champagne. With the inevitable psychological relief of finally reaching JOG, we sacked off the idea of cycling the last 17miles to our accomodation in Wick and instead called for a taxi. As we found out, a lot of cyclists reach the end and decide to get a taxi to Wick -so we felt in good company.

Met at our accomodation over looking the Wick harbour by friendly geordie landlady with a welcome whisky to celebrate. Washed, changed and headed out to celebrate with a beer and a curry. By 11pm again, we were shattered and headed off back to the B+B.