Day 76: Dornoch

Distance: 7.5 miles
Virtual walker: Larry

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the roof. Since we had only a short walk ahead of us, we decided to take our time getting ready in the hopes the weather would improve. Poor strategy. While we slowly ate breakfast, then packed our rucksacks, the rain got heavier, and an
accompanying wind blew up.


From our room, we could see our destination, the pretty town of Dornoch, across the firth only a couple of miles away. But to get there, we had to walk a couple of miles west along the busy A9 road to the Dornoch bridge, then across, then a few miles east on a quiet lane into town.


The A9 is a busy, noisy, road. It's the only highway north from Inverness, so it gets plenty of lorry traffic carrying cases of Irn Bru to the thirsty citizens of Thurso and Wick. Unfortunately, for the next four days we'll see a lot of the A9, since there's pretty much no other way to get from place to place this far north. At least there is a bit of a shoulder on the part we walked today, and a verge that we could use for escape when the really big vehicles came thundering along.


Once over the bridge, we were able to hop a guard rail, scurry down a little hill, and slip through a hole in a fence to a nice quiet path. That took us to a quiet lane which led to town. As soon as we left the highway, the rain started to ease up, and by the time we arrived we even saw little bits of lightish grey sky!


When we started this blog, we invited our friends and family to join us for a segment of our walk. Lots of you thought about it, but as time went by almost everyone dropped out for one reason or another: budget, job, schedule, love of not walking every day. The exception, of course, was Michael and Jan, who walked with us two hundred miles through the Highlands, before veering off (in a car!) to visit Jan's ancestral homeland on the isle of Ulva. And now we have someone else joining us for the last ten day push to John O'Groats: frequent commenter and long time friend Larry!


Larry would like to be here with us in person, like Michael and Jan. But, like so many people, Larry has a job, and a family, and other commitments that got in the way. So instead of flying here to the north of Scotland, he'll be joining us virtually, covering the same mileage that we'll be covering, on the same days. Like us, Larry will be covering 130 miles in ten days. Unlike us, Larry goes to work every day, so he doesn't have the kind of time we do. To make it work, he'll be running the distance. He's already four days in, having started on our day 73 with a seventeen mile run. Today, if all went according to plan, he had a nice easy eight miler. But tomorrow is tough: seventeen miles. A long walk, and a tough run. Larry, it is great to have you along!


I don't want to jinx anything, but the weather forecasts are calling for sunshine. Not just tomorrow, but for all of next week! Our fingers are crossed.

Location:Castle St,Dornoch,United Kingdom