Orkney Family Road Trip – Part 1: Whaligoe Steps, Struie Viewpoint and John o’Groats

The furthest point North we’d ever travelled was in 2018, when I took my husband on a surprise trip to the GlenDronach Distillery. I talk about our first road trip with two under 4s on board in my post “Our First Family Roadtrip” – and it was such a success, that I didn’t think twice about embarking on an even longer road trip to Orkney – an island just off the most northerly point of the Scotland mainland!

The first leg of the journey was from our home in the midlands to John o’ Groats; but we had carefully planned it with a halfway point stop over at my conveniently located parents house. This is my favourite part of the M6 as we head North, it’s always beautiful come rain or shine!

We headed out early as always, to avoid traffic, arriving in the Borders late morning. We had a quiet day catching up with family and then another early night, as we’d be up early again to make the journey up the east coast to John o’ Groats!

Struie View Point

This roadtrip I wasn’t driving, so I’d bought my DSLR to capture photos along the way. The Scottish landscape is so gorgeous and I’ve so many photos of the scenery around us as we travelled up. We detoured from the advised route at one point to take advantage of a great driving road through the Struie – and the opportunity to enjoy the views at Struie viewpoint in a conveniently located layby! It was a stunning day and the greenery just looked so green, and the water was so blue and sparkly! I actually ended up taking several photos to create a beautiful panoramic image of the entire view – which I still need to print and display in the house!

Whaligoe Steps

Our next stop along the way was the little known place of Whaligoe Steps. The steps had been used for years by fishermen to get to their fishing ships in the harbour, but more heroically I feel, is the story of the fishermen’s wives who would traipse up and down these 365 steps carrying all the fish, come rain or shine – and these steps were steep, narrow, slippery and downright treacherous!

It was a long way down, and even when we thought we’d reached the bottom, it turned out there was still some more to go!

On this beautiful day the views out of the harbour and toward the ocean were just beautiful; so still and tranquil.

Needless to say, the climb back up was exhausting, but I would 100% do this again the next time that we find ourselves in the area! For this, due to the steepness of the steps, we did decide to leave the children at the little café at the top, with their Grandad (they were 3 and 5 years old at the time) and there was a little area they could run around at the top to burn off some energy!

After the steps were completed we proceeded along the route to our accomodation for the night, an Air B&B just outside of John O’Groats. It was getting late, and past the boys bedtime, but thankfully it wasn’t a long drive to our accomodation. When we arrived, however, the key safe was empty, and we were unable to contact the owner! Eventually, a helpful local pointed to a house locally where the owners parents lived – tired and frustrated, we headed down the road to get the owners parents, who had a spare key. They came up, entered and … someone was already in there!

Despite booking almost a year in advance, somehow the accomodation had been double booked, and although these people had only booked it recently, they had, irritatingly, pipped us to the post at arriving, so we found ourselves homeless for the night! Of course, John O’Groats is hardly heaving with accomodation options, and the signal was non existent, but eventually the kind owners parents managed to find 3 rooms in a hotel right by the harbour in John o’Groats, offering to cover the room costs, breakfast and a drink at the bar for our troubles.

John o’Groats

Frazzled and irritated, we jumped back in the car and headed up to the hotel, where we were told there were 3 double rooms left – my parents were given a double in a separate accomodation block across the road, and we were given two rooms next to each other: one with an en-suite and one with a share bathroom. Of course, with children at this age, there was no way I was putting them in one room and us in another, so we split up and had a child each and decided to head straight to bed, forfeiting the free drink, and feeling disappointed that our planned evening of getting the children to bed at a reasonable time and relaxing altogether had been been rudely taken away from us. It had been a stressful few hours, putting a dampner on what had otherwise been a brilliant day, and to be honest, I was glad to finally get to bed!

The next morning was another early start, as we had booked the first ferry out to Orkney. We packed our stuff and went out to the cars – only to find someone had parked right behind us and had totally blocked us in to the parking space! Honestly, John O’Groats, a place I initially couldn’t wait to tick off my list, was fast becoming a place I was not wanting to ever visit again! We couldn’t locate the owner, and the hotel staff had no idea who it was either! Time was ticking to get to the ferry port, so eventually 4 very fed up and disgruntled adults put all their frustration into pushing the car, handbrake and all, backwards into the road, until we could squeeze our cars out! Honestly, you couldn’t write this stuff! What a crazy 12 hours!