John o'Groats
As predicted, the weather was pretty foul this morning. There was even a bit of thunder and lightning to accompany the wind and rain.
Eventually it slowed down enough for me to take up walk up the hill to the little post office cum grocery store. The old lady running it seemed to keep a tight ship. No lights were on and I struggled to find anything in the gloom. However, she was friendly and seemingly eager to have a little chat, the old fallback of the weather being a good starting point. "A great summer's morning. Did you hear the thunder ?" she asked. I replied that coming from Africa rainfall seldom occurred without quite a bit of thunder and lightning. She willingly gave me pound coins in change which we needed to operate the laundry back at the campsite and I left feeling quite warmed by my short time with her.
The rest of the morning past sitting in the tent getting some work done before we tackled our laundry. Then a quick lunch and onto the main business of the day as the rain stopped ans the sun came out.
We set off along a path running eastwards from the campsite towards Ducansby Lighthouse, placed a few kilometers east of John o'Groats. Birding was easy along the way with Wheatears, Wagtails, Starlings and Dunlin along the rocks with Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Gannets and various gulls out to sea.
As we approached the lighthouse things started to hot up, eventually producing a great day's birding in the beautiful surroundings of the beach at the Bay of Sannick, the Duncansby Cliffs and The Stacks. We picked up a few new birds along the way but also had superb views of birds we had seen for the first time recently. Yesterday at Dunnet Head was the first time on this trip that we really had the chance to get some good birding done but this afternoon surpassed that many times over.
We once again decamped to the pub at the Seaview Hotel for supper. A bit extravagant but a nice end to the day.
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