Not the day we had planned.
Hotel room was ok but the bed was awful. Helen decided to get up at 7am to have a shower. She discovered that it was digital – that is, two options of Freezing Cold or Boiling Hot! I finally got up at 8am and we went down for breakfast.
Breakfast was a joke. We ordered our breakfast, the tea arrived but we had to ask for milk. When the cooked breakfast arrived, it was dumped (don’t know how else to describe the presented pile) on the plate and Helen only had one item of the four she ordered. They took it back for correction, but she still didn’t get what she ordered and the sausage she was served wasn’t cooked properly. The hotel was generally run down and very poorly kept.
We didn’t have to check out until 10am and we were not sure what to do concerning our plans. I had hoped that the breakdown chap would have rung with news about the part as he said he would by 9am – possibly bad news as he hadn’t. He finally rang at 9:20am and he said that he had tried all his normal suppliers without finding the part. He had contacted a friend who had a landrover for advice. He finally tried that supplier (last chance to get one) and they had one but didn’t deliver. Thankfully he said that he had found a colleague who needed to go to Inverness that day and they had agreed to divert to the supplier to purchase the part. However, the next problem was that he wouldn’t be back until late afternoon with the part. I was ever so grateful for Daniel’s efforts and asked him to get the part as the remainder of the trip collapses without it – or at least getting home with the vehicle.
I rang Pentland ferries to explain the situation and asked if they could shift the existing 12:30pm booking today to the following day on the 8:30am sailing. They said that the ferry at that time was almost full, but upon checking they were able to fit us on. Praise God, ferry rebooked and at no further cost. Sadly I had to cancel the B&B on Orkney and understandably as it was so late in doing so, there was no refund of the £99 cost. As we didn’t want another night of no sleep, I managed to book a room at the new Premier Inn for the night at £129 (with no breakfast) but cannot book in until 3pm.
Checking out of The Royal I did inform the staff that the Landrover would be in their car park until repaired. Thankfully they seemed very indifferent to the problem so I could leave it there.
With no transport. we decided to have an unplanned wander around Thurso. We did find an interesting place, The North Coast Visitor Centre. There were plenty of stones going back to the 8th Century and a fantastic exhibit on Dounreay nuclear site just up the road. Having spent sometime in there we walked to the sea front and for a walk along the sea. It was very smelly as it was covered in thick seaweed but the water was crystal clear.
The smelly seaweed beach at Thurso
We stopped at the local Tesco’s for a cuppa and cake, bought some sandwiches for tonight and breakfast for tomorrow morning – we will need to leave the hotel at 7am at the latest to get to the check in.
Walking back to the Royal hotel car park, we saw a signposted walk along the river Thurso, so took a detour around that before getting back to the Royal hotel at 1:15pm.
Thurso Church
River Walk at Thurso
I decided that I would drive the Landrover to the Premier Inn as it wasn’t busy in the town and the Premier Inn was not far up the road – only four turnings to make with the very heavy steering. Once we arrived at the Premier Inn, we just sat in the Landrover until check in at 3pm. The location is right next to the station and at 2:32pm the train (158722) from Inverness arrived, one I haven’t seen before.
We got into the hotel room at 3pm and what a vast difference from last night. At 4:20pm Daniel (the breakdown man) rang to say he had the part and was leaving now, and would be with me in 10 to 15 minutes. Changing the alternator was easy and within an hour it was all fixed. Just as he had finished and driven off at 5:53pm, another train (158724) arrived, again one I haven’t seen.
As Daniel was heading to Scrabster to collect a broken down car from the ferry, he said that we would sort out the cost tomorrow, so at this stage no idea how much that little incident will cost me!
Returning to the room, Helen hadn’t had her sandwiches, so I suggested we head out to Dunnet Head to eat them. It gives the Landrover a test run and we will get the the most northerly point of the UK main land that we thought we wouldn’t be able to do following the breakdown. We departed at 6pm in dry weather. The north coast of Scotland and particularly Dunnet Head was full, in fact rammed, of Italian camper vans.
Dunnet Head
As Helen didn’t want to get windswept, I took the very short walk to the top of Easter Point where the views were fantastic. The Orkney’s clearly visible, including the Old Man of Hoy, as well as John o Groats. We got back to the Premier Inn at 7:45pm.
Landrover at Dunnet Head following its repair.
Route and elevation for Day 3
30 miles on the odometer