Caithness

Caithness (Gallaibh) is geologically and culturally distinct from the rest of the Highlands. The land is flat — the Old Red Sandstone “Caithness flagstone” floors much of the county and creates the trademark dry-stane field walls — and the heritage is Old Norse rather than Gaelic, a legacy of three centuries of Viking and then Norwegian rule that ended only in 1469. Place-names ending in -ster (Lybster, Thrumster) and -bster come straight from Old Norse; Gaelic, the working language of Sutherland and the west, was never the local language here.

Wick is the larger of the two main towns, a former herring-fishing capital whose Pulteneytown distillery (Old Pulteney) is still operating. Thurso is smaller but has the surfing community, the rail terminus from Inverness, and the Scrabster ferry to Stromness on Orkney — the standard summer day trip from anywhere on the NC500 north arc.

The cliffs and stack-fields are Caithness’s distinctive coastal feature. Duncansby Stacks at the north-east corner are the most-visited; Castle Sinclair Girnigoe, on a knife-edge promontory south of Wick, is the most photographed castle in the county; the Whaligoe Steps near Lybster are a cult favourite for the 365-step descent to a fishermen’s cleaning-station harbour cut into the cliff. John o’ Groats itself has been transformed by the redevelopment of the harbour buildings (Natural Retreats, 2013) and the famous signpost — the original is in a Wick museum; the on-site post is a modern replica that visitors pose with for the End-to-End photograph.

Getting there

By car on the NC500 — typically as the seventh day, after Sutherland and the north coast, with John o’ Groats or Wick as the overnight before the run south to Inverness on the A9. By rail: the Far North Line from Inverness terminates at Thurso (4.5 hours) and Wick (4 hours), with the longer route via Georgemas Junction. By ferry from Orkney: NorthLink runs Stromness–Scrabster (1.5 hours, vehicles and foot passengers); Pentland Ferries runs the smaller Gills Bay–St Margaret’s Hope (1 hour, vehicles and foot).

When to go

Year-round, with the same caveats as Sutherland on small-business winter closures. Caithness is more weather-exposed than Easter Ross — the wind is the dominant factor for cyclists in particular, and prevailing south-westerlies make the run east from Thurso to Wick to Helmsdale a fast day with the wind, slow against. Summer puffin season at Duncansby Head is May to mid-August.