It turned out that we had to walk back towards Golspie to find our route this morning. We turned down a quaint little street, Duke Street (there’s a lot of evidence of the Dukes of Sutherland around here), and walked along to a ford.
Our path took us over the bridge by the ford and along a well-trodden path into the woods. We walked through the woods for a while before realising we should be on the beach. We re-traced our steps.
The path above the beach was wide and grassy. We passed in front of Dunrobin Castle, a chateau-like building, built by the 1st Duke of Sutherland (he of the Clearances notoriety).
The next landmark of our day was the Carn Liath broch. For those of you who don’t know, a broch is a Bronze/Iron age tower roundhouse. This one yielded some high status finds when it was excavated on the orders of -you could see this coming-the Dyke of Sutherland in the nineteenth century. The tower wasn’t very high but there was a room and a staircase and it was fun looking round it, but I always enjoy a bit of archaeology even though this one was -gasp of horror-slightly off the path. It was a short day, after all.
We carried on along the beach, turned a corner, and came upon about thirty seals basking on the beach. Of course, a fair number of them lurched into the sea when they saw us, but quite a few stayed still. Having read all the Nature Reserve notice boards we knew that the thing to do was to move away from them and try not to startle them so we climbed up to the path through the dunes, and followed it all the way to Brora. (I told you it was a short day.)
My campsite had been a WW2 radio station and still had its barrier fence. It was really nice. The grass was closely mown, the loos and showers were sparkling clean -men’s and women’s (I know this as I didn’t see the sign saying Gents until I was on my way out) and the owner found me a chair to sit on.
Having set up the tent, I went to find Tim -he had out some of my camping gear in his bag which is being carried by a luggage transfer service (Gary, who is based in Wick) – and we had lunch (cheese toasties) at a cafe. I spent the afternoon reading, charging my phone, and enjoying the sunshine. I had dinner at Tim’s hotel before heading back via the Co-op to stock up on breakfast and lunch for tomorrow.
Rose's LEJOG 