18th September 2021 – 64 miles travelled
Despite the long days to get here we were up and out early as today is predicted to be one of the better days weather wise.
We headed further north to start with to visit Castle Sinclair Girnigoe, a complex or ruined stone structures built over 200 years, originally in 1470 and added to through the early 17th century. Tom Tom took us via the A9 in direction of Thurso which involved a lot of small roads to get there, am sure there is a better route.
From the car park for the castle we were able to view Noss lighthouse, this was the first lighthouse to have diagonal glass panes on the exterior of the lantern. You can stay in the cottages at the bottom of the lighthouse – maybe next time.
From Castle Sinclair Girnigoe we were going to head to Sinclair Bay but not specific destination, it is a long large bay, when we saw a signpost for Staxigoe harbour and decided to follow the sign to investigate.
It was a beautiful harbour and the day had turned out lovely, beautiful blue skies with fluffy white clouds and it was really warm. There was some big waves breaking on the rocks and a little grebe bobbing about. There was a couple of picnic tables down by the harbour so we took our lunch down to enjoy there and afterwards Gavin put the drone up for a fly around.
After a long lunch break, couple of hours, we drove to Keiss beach on Sinclair Bay, had originally tried to view Keiss Castle but this would have been a long walk along the headland. Keiss beach was a lovely long sandy beach with only a few people on it, there was a strong breeze blowing off the sea.
Next castle of the day was Ackergill castle which we saw sign posted and was on the information board at the earlier castle. We didn’t get up to Ackergill castle but stopped at a little harbour that gave us lovely views of it over the bay.
The journey back to the cottage took us via Wick so had a quick pit stop to see Wick harbour. Wick has quite a large harbour which was very photogenic.
