Our original plan for Tuesday had been to head to Wick and come back. However, we decided that getting all the way to Wick without going to John O'Groats was like turning back 200 yards from the summit, so we sought a way to get to John O'Groats and back in a day.
We had initially planned to get the 10:38 train out of Inverness to Wick, but to get to John O'Groats using buses between Wick and John O'Groats would have meant getting the 07:00 train. In an effort not to have a hideously early start, we found that we could get a bus all the way from Inverness to John O'Groats which left later. So we did that:
0940 Inverness to Dunbeath war memorial, arr 1156
Bus number: X99, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 52429
Distance: approx 83 miles
The X99 bus route, run by Stagecoach and essentially using pretty comfortable 49-seater coaches, connects Inverness to John O'Groats along the A9 road. We weren't quite sure if the bus was included in our ticket (further examination suggests it probably wasn't) but the driver let us on anyway.
The A9 essentially follows the coast up from Inverness to Thurso, but the railway line comes much further inland at times to go up one side of a firth and down the other, rather than going over a bridge at the bottom of the firth. As such, the bus route from Inverness to John O'Groats is a full 40 miles shorter than the railway line, and thus takes just over three hours rather than nearly five hours.
This means that the road and the railway line take, at times, completely different routes, with completely different scenery, meaning that by going both ways we saw much more varied and interesting scenery than we would have otherwise. What's more, we were very lucky in getting dry (though overcast) weather.
Most of the route was along fairly normal single-carriageway roads, albeit it set against a beautiful North Sea coastline. However, between Helmsdale and Wick, the railway line curves inland away from the steep coast, while the road follows the coast with 13% gradients and numerous hairpins. It was probably the most exciting coach ride I've ever been on - we were going round corners rather faster than I would have expected in a car, let alone a coach - but we all enjoyed it immensely.
Our first bus was heading for Thurso and on to Scrabster, the ferry terminal for the Orkney Islands, and was surprisingly busy, picking up people at a number of the intermediate towns such as Tain, Dornoch, Golspie and Helsmdale. For passengers heading to Wick and John O'Groats, there is a connecting bus from Dunbeath, just south of the junction for Wick and Thurso, which was waiting for us:
1201 Dunbeath war memorial to John O'Groats, arr 1254
Bus number: X99, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 52528
Distance: approx 37 miles
Changing at Dunbeath war memorial to the other X99 was probably the weirdest place any of us have ever changed buses, but we were not alone. Well... we weren't alone to Wick, anyway; Wick is the second-biggest town (behind Thurso) north of Inverness, and many people were heading there to do their shopping. But after Wick, we were the only people left on the bus.
The bus dropped us at the end of the road down to John O'Groats, so we walked the last five minutes down to the famous sign - which, contrary to popular belief, is not run by the local council but rather by a photographic business, who will post out framed photographs of you posing in front of the sign. We duly posed for a photograph - with the distance to the University of Warwick (where we met), some 595 miles away, on the signpost - though not before getting some lunch in one of the two cafes in John O'Groats.
It really is an amazing feeling getting to the "end" of the country - and by public transport at that! - not least because of the barren scenery we pass through to get there. The journey takes a full three hours to cover the 130 miles from Inverness, which is itself nearly 200 miles from Edinburgh and Glasgow. John O'Groats is, in fact, further from Edinburgh than Coventry is, which really gives an idea of just how remote a place it is.
Having come up by bus and spent a couple of hours wandering around John O'Groats, we took another bus back to Wick station to head back to Inverness by train:
1445 John O'Groats to Wick station, arr 1514
Bus number: 77, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 27590
Distance: approx 16 miles
On this bus we were not quite alone - there was one other passenger to Wick - but the emptiness of the bus is reflected in the emptiness of the scenery. The short half-hour journey to Wick left us with time to buy a drink before boarding our train to take us on the 175 miles back to Inverness:
1600 Wick to Inverness, arr 2009
Headcode: 2H64, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158705
Distance: 175 miles; walk-up price: £11.20
The railway line between Inverness and Wick is undoubtedly the most remote line in the country: ostensibly it provides a rail connection for the Orkney and Shetland islands, but more importantly it serves the small communities along the line - none of which has more than 9000 people.
In order to serve both Wick and Thurso, trains from Inverness run to Georgemas Junction, from where there are two branches to Thurso and Wick. Because the branch to Thurso is only six miles, the trains from Inverness run to Georgemas Junction, reverse to head to Thurso, reverse again to head back to Georgemas Junction, and head on to Wick. For our train, heading to Inverness, we did the reverse: we headed west to Georgemas Junction, then due north to Thurso, back south to Georgemas Junction, and finally south-west on the long slog to Inverness.
But what a slog: the scenery, especially north of Helmsdale, is so remote and barren as to look like no-one has touched it since the making of the earth, other than to put down a railway line. Instead of hairpin bends and steep gradients along the coast from Wick, we start heading due west, coming miles and miles inland, in order to follow a valley down to Helmsdale, finally rejoining the coast and the A9 there.
And what a day: by the time we left Wick, the overcast weather we had started with in Inverness had cleared and turned to bright, warm sunshine, with clear blue skies and superb visibility. From the coast between Helmsdale and Golspie, we were heading south-west, and could see very clearly across to the south-east to the north coast of Aberdeenshire, nearly 40 miles away.
South of Golspie we turned north-west up the valley to Lairg, before following the valley down to Tain. Until 1991, the A9 road took a similar route, but since then the A9 has taken a new bridge across the Dornoch Firth, cutting 25 miles off the journey north; there were initially proposals to double-deck the bridge for trains as well, but funding could not be found and the railway thus loses out quite badly to the road in journey time.
On hitting Tain, we finally started to return to some semblance of civilisation; the countryside north of Inverness is so empty and devoid of human activity that it's hard to convey in words just how barren and desolate it was. But gradually we chugged along back to Inverness.
Due to "poor performance of the train" (that is, the engine wasn't quite at full power for the summits) we ended up back in Inverness about nine minutes late, at 20:18 instead of 20:09. There was a connecting train at 20:15 to Glasgow Queen Street which, aside from the sleeper train to London, was the last train to Perth for connections to Edinburgh; the conductor had asked passengers to see if there were any making onward journeys, and radioed ahead to say there were passengers heading for the Glasgow train.
Those passengers were duly instructed to head to platform 4 for the 20:15 to Glasgow, but when we pulled into platform 6 there was no train to be seen in platform 4. It transpired that Inverness station had changed their plans and instead of holding the connection by three minutes they decided to make the poor passengers heading for the Glasgow train take the sleeper train to Perth or Stirling and then, since that would be the last train through those stations, presumably onward to Glasgow by taxi.
We were very surprised to see that the last connection of the day was not held - and only by three or four minutes - simply for the purpose of making punctuality statistics look better. It is a sad day when it is cheaper for a train company to taxi passengers and get them home hours late than it is to pay the fine for having one of their trains run late and get passengers home five minutes late; in contrast to Saturday's excellent work by Scotrail in diverting trains after the Forth Bridge lightning strike, this was the disjointed railway network at its absolute worst.
I lay no fault at the conductor of the train; I am ashamed at Inverness station, and Scotrail management, for deciding that helping a dozen passengers make the last connection of the day wasn't worth doing. Shame on you, Scotrail; whatever happened to the idea of never leaving a man down?
That incident, however, did little to tarnish the beautiful day we'd had going to John O'Groats and back. In retrospect, we should have planned to go there by bus and come back by train from the beginning: both have completely different scenery, and it was really nice to see both routes in one day.
On arrival in Inverness, we grabbed some dinner in McDonalds and ate in the glorious evening sunshine on the banks of the River Ness, before heading back to our hotel ready for an epic day on Wednesday, travelling to Fort William via the Isle of Skye.
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