Walk 216 -- Tongue to Eriboll

Ages: Colin was 67 years and 6 days. Rosemary was 64 years and 148 days.

Weather: Very sunny and warm, with a cold enough breeze to keep us sane. A few small fluffy clouds, but nothing of significance. (We can’t help feeling rather smug as it’s raining in England!)
Location: Tongue to Eriboll.
Distance: 12½ miles.
Total distance: 1952 miles.
Terrain: Entirely road-walking, though we did divert to walk the ‘old road’ at times.
Tide: In going out.
Rivers: No.182, Kyle of Tongue at Tongue. No.183, River Hope at Hope Bridge.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: None.
‘Historic Scotland’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We moved our caravan from Bettyhill to Durness yesterday. We had made lots of enquiries locally about a bus between Durness and Bettyhill which ran mid-morning, according to the Traveline website. But it all drew a blank, just that the bus driver sometimes takes the school bus home to Bettyhill after delivering the children to Durness School. So we decided the only way was to thumb a lift. We drove to Eriboll and parked the car opposite the phone box. Then a bus turned up! But the driver was very apologetic — he had heard about our request but he wasn’t the one who lived in Bettyhill, he lived just a mile further down the road which wasn’t much help. We didn’t have to wait long, despite the lack of traffic, before two ladies stopped for us and were very obliging. One of them ran a B&B, and they were off to do their weekly shopping in Thurso. They dropped us off on the causeway part way across the Kyle of Tongue where we finished the last Walk.
At the end, we finished the Walk at the car in Eriboll. After refreshing ourselves with tea and biscuits, we drove back to our caravan in Durness.
The weather took a turn for the worse, it couldn’t last forever! In the end we decided to cut our losses and go home. The journey of over 600 miles took two full days, but we voted the caravan idea a success.

We gave a card about our blog to the ladies who gave us a lift, and also gave one to a couple who were picnicking where we were dropped off. They seemed surprised that we got out of a car and then were left to our own devices in such a remote place.
Before we left the causeway, we once more admired the magnificent scenery. It looked especially good in the bright sunshine. We can hardly believe the weather we have had for the past week or so — today it was brilliantly sunny again and really hot out of the wind. There were pointy mountains to the south of us. We could see the road to Tongue which we didn’t have to walk last time because we took a steep narrow road which was a short cut.
We saw the old pier that was used for the passenger ferry pre-1971. And we looked closely at the water which was a beautiful turquoise colour. Then we crossed the bridge at the end of the causeway.
We didn’t take the lane to Strathan because it is a dead end. Then we would have had to walk for miles and miles across rough country which is swampy, cut by myriads of streams and gullies interspersed with lochans, strewn with rocks and covered with close contours. Definitely no paths or tracks. None of this makes for easy walking, so we left out the entire headland and stuck to the one and only road. A digger was gouging out a ditch on the side of this, but this vehicle blocking the road didn’t exactly cause a traffic jam with one vehicle every twenty minutes or so!
We went up on the moors where there is a good and fairly straight road for about eight miles. This road must have been renewed quite recently because it was in such a good state. We found strips of the old road running parallel, sometimes for a mile or two, so we walked on those when we could. Colin found this to be quite enjoyable, though I didn’t mind which I walked on because there was no traffic. But Colin was happy and didn’t moan (he hadn’t been looking forward to today’s Walk because it was all on roads) so I was pleased. I was also pleased about the weather — out in the open up there I bet it is hell on most days of the year!
The gorse flowers were lovely, as usual, and we saw two red deer in the far distance, but not much else. Human habitation for the entire eight miles is zilch! There is not even a fence, the whole area is completely wild. We stopped by a dried-out pond because we could get down in the hollow out of the wind. We sat there to eat our pies, and Colin noticed a deer’s footprint in the algae-strewn mud. While he was attempting to photograph it, a loopy caterpillar started doing it’s stuff along the underside of his camera case. I found this more interesting than the footprint!
The old road was in a terrible condition, having been neglected for years. Further along it was flooded, so we walked along the very edge of it. I got my foot stuck in a swamp, so I wasn’t best pleased. Luckily I didn’t get water in my boot, but it was a near thing.
We came upon a single building, the only one in all of the eight miles. It was a roofless house with a plaque set into the end. This was difficult to read, mainly because it was very wordy, Victorian-style. We gathered it was a tribute to the brave men who built the first road across here in 1830. That must have been a terrible job — hard labour mostly in dreadful weather conditions. This must have been where they slept, I wonder who brought their food out here. Graffiti artists had been at work on the house, and actually their pictures were quite good.
Further on we managed to get out of the wind again by sitting next to a stream. So we ate our sarnies there.
My! It is bleak up on those moors! Miles and miles of nothing in all directions. The old road got worse and worse with deep holes appearing in it, so we had to go back to the new road. Colin didn’t like that, though there were barely any cars, and kept saying he’d found another bit of old road. But by now they were just heaps of earth and impossible to walk on, and even Colin conceded.


We saw a couple of greylag geese on the ground. As we approached them they flew off, and Colin got some superb pictures. Then we came across a substantial notice welcoming us to the “North-West Highlands Geopark”. What difference that made to the scenery I don’t know, but it was nice to feel welcome!
Soon after that we began to descend to the River Hope which drains the freshwater Loch Hope. At last we were off those bleak moors, but out of the wind it became very hot. Much prettier though. We took a shortcut through some trees which was a very short detour, but pleasant.
The other side of Hope Bridge we sat on the grass for a “water break”. (Really because we needed a bit of a rest.) It was 3pm, and we reckoned we had about five miles to go. I was exhausted, so I put myself in ‘March-Mode’ and psyched myself up for the last assault.
Feeling slightly refreshed, we stomped up the twisty road to the top of another headland, but this is a much smaller one. From the top we caught our first sight of the deep salt-water Loch Eriboll. It always has been used by the Army and Navy for their manoeuvres, and still is today. (Apparently the conscripts used to call it “Loch ’Orrible” because they hated being up there so much!) But it looked really beautiful today in the brilliant sunshine. There are numerous small lochans on this second headland, and we could see northwards the fearsome headland that we had by-passed. We were glad we had made that decision.
There is no bridge or causeway across Loch Eriboll, we will have to walk all the way round it and it’s miles! But we only have to do about three miles of it today.
The road led us gently past the ubiquitous flowering gorse down to the lochside where there was a fish farm in the water.
We continued walking while it was flat, but as soon as it started to go uphill we sat down and ate our chocolate. We could see the trees where our car was parked, but they still looked an awful long way away.
We began to pass the occasional farm building, most of which were derelict ruins. Further on there were sheep all over the road. We seemed to be herding them as we walked along, and they got more and more noisy. One lamb had lost its Mum, and was bashing its head against the fence to get back in the field. It was quite distressed, but there wasn’t anything we could do to help it. Fortunately all the sheep had managed to get round behind us before we reached the farm where we had parked our car this morning, on a rough grass verge opposite a phone box.
That ended Walk no.216, we shall pick up Walk no.217 next time at the phone box opposite the farm at Eriboll. It was twenty past five, so the Walk had taken six hours and fifty minutes. While we were drinking our tea, the farmer (who was out of sight behind some trees, but up a ladder mending a roof) started shouting aggressively at his wife. We couldn’t make out whether he was talking English in a broad Scottish accent or speaking Gallic — it sounded a bit like “up yer clunge!” as the Scottish chef in the original version of the TV series ‘Reginald Perrin’ used to say! The word “England” was there, and the wife seemed to be saying, “Well you go out and tell them then!” But no one came out to speak to us. We thought it best to beat a hasty retreat, so we hurriedly packed up and drove back to Durness.
The next day we had planned as a rest day anyway, but the weather took a turn for the worse. We had been very fortunate so far, it couldn’t last forever! We took the opportunity to gain as much local information as we could about Cape Wrath. It got extremely windy again, and we had to move the caravan away from the cliff edge. The warden told us, “We haven’t lost one yet!” but I was nervous and insisted we moved as far away from the sea as possible.
The following day we had planned as our final Walk this session, but after a very uncomfortable night with the caravan bouncing about in the wind and teeming rain the next morning along with it, we decided to cut our losses and go home. The journey of over 600 miles took two full days, but we voted the caravan idea a success.

Walk 215 -- Bettyhill to Tongue

Ages: Colin was 67 years and 4 days. Rosemary was 64 years and 146 days.

Weather: Not a cloud in the sky all day! Cool and welcoming breeze in exposed places.
Location: Bettyhill to Tongue.
Distance: 16 miles.
Total distance: 1939½ miles.
Terrain: Too much road-walking. Across dunes and a beautiful beach at the beginning. Round a small headland on a moorland path near Skerray.
Tide: In going out.
Rivers: No.179, River Naver, on the east side of the beach near Bettyhill. No.180, River Borgie, on the west side of the beach. No.181, Strathtongue Burn, at Coldbackie.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: None.
‘Historic Scotland’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We were staying in our caravan in Bettyhill. This morning Colin drove to Tongue and parked at a picnic area on the causeway. He was supposed to catch the school bus, but since he was early he thumbed a lift instead back to the caravan site
At the end, we finished the Walk at the car on the causeway. After drinking our tea and demolishing a few biscuits, we drove back to our caravan in Bettyhill.

We walked through the caravan site to the main entrance, then along the road through Bettyhill. We passed the bus shelter where we had waited so long for a bus yesterday. Someone had scratched “Silly!” on the Perspex, probably because no buses ply this route any more — only the school bus which drives from it’s overnight parking spot (the other side of Bettyhill across the river) towards Thurso very early in the morning on schooldays only. The driver was a bit puzzled to find he had two ordinary passengers yesterday, and let us have a free ride because he wasn’t geared up to collect fares!
Behind the bus shelter was a goose sitting on her nest. She looked at us quizzically as we took her photo, but didn’t seem over-bothered by our presence.
We passed the school entrance, and noticed that a lot of teenagers seemed to be out of school buying ice creams in the shop even though it was the middle of the morning. None of them wore uniforms and all were sloppily dressed. Some of the girls had such short skirts they were almost indecent. I would be very concerned if such a school was the one I had to send my children to — I think the way the students dress is indicative of the standard of education a child will receive in a school, and I wasn’t very impressed with Bettyhill School. Perhaps they have difficulty in attracting good teachers to such an out-of-the-way place, Bettyhill really is a long way from anywhere.
Next we passed an ugly building site in front of some bungalows, but I expect the area will improve once the houses are built. By then we were out of Bettyhill, it is a tiny place. We had lovely views across to the sands of Torrisdale Bay where we wanted to walk, but there was a river in the way. So we followed the road southwards alongside the River Naver for about a mile until we reached the bridge. There was no pavement so we wore our bright yellow vests.
Just across the bridge was a gypsy caravan set up as a shop selling knick-knacks, but we didn’t go in. We removed our visible vests, and walked northwards alongside the River Naver on the sand, passing a barn that had seen better days, until we were opposite Bettyhill. We had walked a good two miles and were in almost exactly the same place — BUT there wasn’t a river in the way anymore. The tide was in, but we had found there was still room to walk along the river edge without getting wet.
We climbed over some hard-packed dunes to the beautiful sandy beach. The beaches along this north coast are absolutely lovely — trouble is there are too few of them and they are all very short. We came across the skeleton of an animal, the bones were bleached white in the sun. We thought it was the remains of a seal.
There was one other person enjoying the sunshine on this gorgeous beach, a man who was paddling along the edge of the waves. We thought he was brave because, although we had wall-to-wall blue sky, the wind was a bit nippy and the water must have been cold. We were both still wearing coats.
We walked on, enjoying the sun, the sand and the surf. It was lovely walking along this idyllic beach with the surf pounding.
Then we couldn’t believe our eyes — for this man had thrown off his shirt and was going in for a swim!
He must have been really tempted, forgetting that on this north coast there is nothing between us and the North Pole. That water must have been perishing!
He didn’t stay in long, in fact no sooner had he been washed over by a wave, he was out again.

Barking!

We sat on the dunes and ate our pies. We didn’t want to leave, in fact we walked on the sand a lot further than we need have because we were enjoying it so much. We passed what could have been the remains of a wreck, or perhaps some wartime construction — it was difficult to tell.
Colin photographed a fearsome looking beetle on the sand. We walked right out on a sand bar until we came to the River Borgie instead of cutting the corner. There the sand was a bit softer and we left deep footprints.
Then we walked alongside this second river until we came to a footbridge. We crossed this and climbed some steps to a lane.
We turned north. The lane took us alongside the river where we had good views of the beach we had so reluctantly left, until we came to a cemetery.
Before we left the shore, we sat on a grass verge to eat our sarnies. There was no traffic whatsoever. It was hot inland, really hot because we were out of the wind. We passed a tin chapel and a war memorial. Then we came to a row of attractive cottages, one of which was a Post Office-cum-village shop. But it was closed! It only opens in the mornings and we had dallied so long on the beach it was now afternoon. I was so disappointed because I wanted to buy an ice cream.
A man was sitting outside one of the cottages washing deer antlers. We got chatting, people are very friendly in these out-of-the-way places. He told us he makes walking stick and shooting stick handles out of the antlers when he’s polished them up, and sells them to the tourists. We chatted about our Trek, and he informed us that there was a ‘new’ coast path up the next lane. He reckoned it was way-marked all the way round to the Kyle of Tongue (our destination this Walk) though he admitted he hadn’t walked it. There is no vestige of it on the ‘Explorer’ OS map, just rough country which we didn’t want to risk because there were so many rocks and close contours.

We were dithering about whether we should risk it. We walked up to where he said, and sure enough there was a brand new footpath signpost — quite a rarity in Scotland. We decided to follow it. A rough path took us over the moors and round a rocky headland where we had magnificent views of two uninhabited islands offshore. It was well way-marked. It took us down to the beach and then round to Skerray Harbour. Then it just seemed to stop, we couldn’t see any more way-marks anywhere.
There is a caravan site at Skerray Harbour, one of those ‘certificated’ sites that will only take five caravans and merely have a tap, a drain and a rubbish bin for facilities. We were able to fill our water bottles, which we were pleased about because we had both forgotten to replenish them this morning. There was also a police car there, which we thought a bit odd. Are they still checking up on us after that Dounreay incident? Well, if they are, they can note that we are getting on slowly with our declared intention of walking the entire coast of mainland Britain. (Or am I getting like my late uncle, who became more and more convinced in his old age that the police were following him about wherever he went. It became an obsession with him before he died — nothing and no one, not even the police themselves, could persuade him otherwise. I believe this is quite a common mental illness — oh dear! I hope I’m not beginning to suffer from it!)
Anyway, back to the Walk. We couldn’t see any more footpaths to lead us on, so we walked up the lane to Skerray and on to Modsary — the way we had originally planned. There we saw another arrow similar to the way-markers on the ‘new’ footpath, so we looked at the map again. All it showed was one track leading out to the middle of nowhere and then stopping. Lots of rocks and close contours, quite a few streams and small lochans — we didn’t like the look of it. It would have saved us several miles if it had worked, but we were too tired to take the risk with no information so we continued along the lane to the main road. This was very tedious and hard on the feet. Colin felt this especially as the soles of his feet began stinging like mine did last year. It is caused by friction and there is really very little can be done about it — except stop walking. My soles have now ‘hardened’ somewhat and I no longer find this much of a problem, but Colin still has to go through the pain barrier!
At last we got to the main road, though you would hardly know it as there was so little traffic — about one vehicle every ten minutes. Although it is an A class road, it is mostly single track with passing places. We sat on the verge to eat our chocolate. All we could see in any direction was open moorland.
According to our OS map, the next loop of the road had a track cutting off the bend. We decided to take this short cut, and happily started down the track which bypassed a small lochan. It was OK as far as the lochan, then we had to climb over a locked gate. The track the other side was so overgrown it might as well have not been there. It was very difficult walking through thick undergrowth, then climbing over another locked gate to get back on to the road.
It would have been far quicker and easier if we had stayed on the road. Now we knew why we had walked all those miles along a tarmacked lane instead of taking a ‘short-cut’ across the moors following a ‘new’ coastal path. You never know what you are in for in Scotland!
We descended to the village of Coldbackie, and there we had magnificent views across the Kyle of Tongue. I think the wonderful scenery of north-western Scotland starts here at the Kyle of Tongue. The islands we could see in the entrance to the Kyle are called ‘Rabbit Islands’.
The sun was a bit strong shining directly into our eyes, we were very tired and it seemed a long way to our road turn-off. We could see the causeway, and we could even see our car parked in the picnic area just before the bridge.

But it was still a long way away! It was blissful to get into the shade of some trees and out of the blinding sun. That’s the problem when it is low in the sky and we are walking towards it.
We were both getting very weary, this was a long Walk and we had walked yesterday too. At last we reached the narrow road which leads directly down to the causeway, but even that was longer than we thought. But it was downhill, and a lot of it was through trees.
The causeway and bridge were built in 1971, not so long ago. Before that there was a passenger ferry across the Kyle of Tongue, but motorists had to drive all the way round the end — a heck of a way! We trudged along the causeway towards our car, but were rewarded with magnificent views both to north and south. A marvellous end to a long Walk!
That ended Walk no.215, we shall pick up Walk no.216 next time at the picnic site on the causeway across the Kyle of Tongue It was quarter to seven, so the Walk had taken eight hours and twenty minutes. After drinking our tea and demolishing a few biscuits, we drove back to our caravan in Bettyhill.