When a Thing is Wick

Hello, hello! This morning we bade farewell to Ullapool and headed northeast. Our first stop was to the Falls of Shin, and of course, I took -many- pictures. I'll post a couple for you to whet your appetite so to speak. Everyday the Highland spell wraps itself more firmly around me. I think it is impossible to take a bad picture out here. You could just fling your camera about willy-nilly, clicking randomly and they'd still turn out.

There is a shop at the pull off of the Falls of Shin that is reputed to be the Harrod's of the Highlands or some such. The same man owns both of them, so I think it will be easy for you to surmise how the reputation came to be.

Haven told me there was a pair of shoes on display in the London Harrod's that were so expensive they decided they needed to be kept under tight security. The security they chose was not lasers and alarms, but instead they used a snake! I can't recall the type of snake, boa or python or something equally ferocious. There was nothing like that in this Highland outpost, however. Nothing but the ever present gorgeous scenery which London will never have.

We continued up through the middle of the country towards the northern coast, travelling on narrow winding roads. Sharing those roads with cyclists, sheep and other cars to name a few. Alec, our driver, was very skilled and maneuvered us around and between them without any difficulty. I hate to do this as it must be very old by now, and I post pictures so they might speak for me... but still I have to add...

Is this not -the- most beautiful country you've ever seen?? Everyday is a little different and everyday it takes my breath away. I marked this place in my notebook, saying, "I must remember to return and spend time in Betty's Hill. The views... magnificent! The scenery... dare I say it? No, I haven't the words, except 'must return'!"

And here we have... more heather! This time its in the foreground of the sea though, so, you see, I take care of you, changing it up a bit. (Well Blogger decided to not save what I wrote about this and the next two pics so I have to rewrite it. Grrr... never as good as the first!) I'm sure I said something very poetic, but I can't recall it, so we'll just move on to the next. We drove up through the middle of the country to the north coast and arrived at Castle Mey.


Sometime in the castle's history it was owned by a laird (shocker! but wait... there's more). As happened surprisingly frequently back in the day, the laird died leaving no direct heir, so the castle passed to the nearest living relative. Unfortunately, he wasn't very "near" at all. Through changes of hands and disinterested owners, the castle began to fall into ruin.

About this time, King Albert died, turning the then Queen into the Queen Mother and their daughter became Queen. With that slight change in title, the Queen Mother had to give up all her households to her daughter and that left her with blessed little place to live. She mourned the death of her husband greatly, for they had been lucky to have a love match. Friends who lived in the area of Castle Mey invited her to stay with them to get away from London for awhile.

She fell in love with the countryside and on one of her meanderings she came across Castle Mey. The owner wasn't able to fix up the castle and he knew the people who would inherit it from him wouldn't bother. When he saw the Queen Mother's interest, he promptly sold it to her for the discounted price of 100 pounds. Now, she spent much more than that making it inhabitable, but 100 pounds for a castle... that's a deal!


She lived most of her remaining 51 years at Castle Mey and was very content. From all I've learned about the Queen Mother, I'm sad I never got a chance to meet her. She seems a woman of great spunk and grace.

In our wanderings we came upon this sign, "Stop and Look", and so we did. I guess I'm not very observant because I didn't really see it do anything. Standing up and turning around I was afforded a most magnificent view of the ocean and thought, "Someone should put a sign out for -that-!" ;)


After Castle Mey we went to John O'Groats, the most northern village in mainland Great Britain. Oddly, I didn't take any pictures! I sent off a postcard so it could have the John O'Groats post mark and we hurried back on the bus. The wind and rain had started to pick up a bit, so I think I wanted to spare my camera the indecencies of the elements. Yeah, that sounds good.

On to Wick, a smallish town on the East Coast. If you look at a map, its only a few miles from John O'Groats, but they still say its on the East Coast. We had a bit of time after dinner so Anna and I decided to see if the local night life was any better than in St. George. The girl at reception recommended a pub called "Zero", so off we went into the night to find said club. I admit to being a little worried about what we'd find, judging by the twelve year olds we saw roaming the streets, but it turned out to be quite a fun little spot.

While we were waiting for things to pick up, I noticed a car outside and thought it had kind of a funny message on the side. Do these people go around picking people up to have therapy sessions while they take in the scenery? It was all very intriguing to me. Then I noticed it was a taxi and that was just an advert for the Samaritans. I like my idea better.


We met this very friendly girl, named Stroma, after one of the islands off the coast. She showed us around and introduced us to anyone who came up. "This is Heidi, she's from Utah in America! She's a Christian, she likes cider and eats custard!" She'd just say random things like that to whoever we passed. They look rather drunk in this picture, and they might have been, though they didn't look it before or after I took the picture.

They had music playing and a dance floor, so I wanted to dance. Anna isn't much of one for dancing, but eventually she came out onto the floor. A couple of guys, who turned out to be Polish, danced with us. We hung out with them for most of the night, getting back to our hotel around 3ish. I really enjoyed it. See, St. George! A little town -can- have a nightlife! :P


A few hours later, after breakfast, Anna took a catnap in the lobby and I went out for a walkabout. Wick really isn't very big and I walked the whole of it in about an hour. I met a friendly Scot who helped me find a landmark I'd been looking for, and again, he thought I was Canadian. I really don't understand it! Everyone keeps thinking we are from Canada... like we have odd accents or something.

Wick has a hospital, and I was going to stop inside to see what RTs make in Scotland, but I didn't, thinking I'd find out sooner or later. I took quite a few pictures of this town, so you'll get to see more in the slide show I hear my mom is planning on us doing.

There is a street in Wick that has random Scottish phrases with their English interpretations underneath engraved into the stones. I, of course, took pictures of them all. This one says, "A scaad o'heit" which clearly means, "A spell of hot weather". Luckily, we've had oodles and scaads o'heit ;) (In our family, that means not much ;) Confused? Ask me about it later.)