Lands End to John O' Groats

We woke to a beautiful sunny day in Kirk sound. This needs mentioning because we have had far too few during our time in Scotland, so it made a nice change to look up out of the forehatch and see blue, rather than white, and for the first time in ages open the hatch without fear of getting rained on. It's nice lying in bed with the hatch open, the world behind Pixie reflected in a mirror image in the Perspex hatch. This morning Pixie had gained a friend during the night. Reflected in the hatch was the silhouette of a small black gillimot sitting on the coach roof. I managed to get a few photographs from out of the hatch and some from the cockpit before it flew away.

The tide started to run south at around 1330 that day, so it left us a bit of time for one last Orkney Ice Cream, and a bit of shopping. We moved Pixie to the otherside of the bay, inflated the tender and went ashore.

Near the Italian Chapel is the Orkney Wine shop, selling Ice Cream, Orkney Fruit Wine, Celina's Jewllery, Scottish chocolate, and other local crafts. When we first met Celina, after she collected us from Stomness, she told us about the fruity wines and confessed a liking of their Strubarb. Strubarb, if you haven't guessed is a blend of strawberry and rhubarb. We bought ourselves a bottle, and left one as a surprise for Celina, along with a thank you card. We then just had enough time to eat our ice creams before heading back to Pixie.

With Sprite the tender safely stowed, we upped anchor, put up the mainsail and set off. During our time in Scotland I have been haunted by a tune sung in gaelic we've heard on the radio on folk nights quite a few times. Attempts to find out the artist and the name of the song (which, of course, is in gaelic) using the iPhone application Shazam have failed because the recordings are live and while Shazam is good, it doesn't work with live unrecorded music. So it was with some delight that I heard the tune played on Radio 2 recorded at the Cambridge Folk Festival and we were able to get the artists name. She's called Julie Fowlis and the song is called Hùg Air A Bhonald Mhòir. Thanks to the wonder of the iPhone I can increase the size of my music collection at anchor in a bay off Orkney. Many hours later when the album had finished downloading we were able to listen to her album Cuilidh. This happened to coincide with us leaving Orkney. The sun was shining, the wind was behind us and we were leaving the islands we'd spend so much time (and money) trying to reach. The sun light made the green islands glow on the way out, once clear of the sound and on course we got out the cruising chute for the first time since we reached Scotland around mid June. Gaelic music on the stereo, fond memories of beautiful, mystic and secretive Orkney, the sun glowing from above, blue sky, deeper blue water, a fair breeze, Pixie sailing effortlessly under her brighlty coloured cruising chute, and my fiancé opposite me smiling away. It has to be one of the best times of the trip for me so far. After everything that we have been through, that was one of those special times that seems to make everything worth it. I would say it's priceless, but unfortunately Kirsty and I know more or less how much that moment has cost us, and that's not including the engagement ring!

Like all good things it came to an end the wind came around slightly forward of the beam, and we had to take the cruising chute down, then once we were south of John O' Groats the wind faded, we sailed for as long as we could, it was rewarding to know we had sailed from one end of the country to the other.

Eventually the wind died, it clouded over and started to rain. Heavily.


We got to Wick around 1930 before seeing what Wick had to offer. Secretly we hoped for fish and chips, but in reality it was a very cheap curry and beers from the local Wetherspoons.