The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Discover Scotland’s ‘Patagonia in miniature’
Who needs Andean mountains and steppes when the Unesco-listed Flow Country wetlands are on your doorstep? Chris Moss has a sense of déja-vu
Iwas giddily excited about the journey to Wick and Thurso. I had been to Scotland’s northeast corner once before – a flying visit to John O’Groats after a road trip from Land’s End. I have little recollection of it except signing a book to register my visit and feeling it was a bit pathetic to drive there when so many people rode bicycles or even, like Ian Botham, walked.
This time I caught the train. As I live in Lancashire, the Caledonian Sleeper is not as convenient as it is for Londoners. It stops at Preston at 12.30am on the way up and at around 4.30am on the return leg. I dozed for a couple of hours and woke to coffee and porridge somewhere north of Perth.
The snow was right up to the trackside. I spotted a stag on a hillock, and saw the great slab of the Cairngorms’ central plateau. But let me hasten onward past Inverness and get us on to the Far North Line. This 161-mile railway weaves through the Flow Country: the largest area of blanket bog on earth. Look on a map and you will notice the line’s sweeping meanders.
While crossing wetland isn’t easy, it is more straightforward than skirting the inlets and ups and downs of the coast. The train runs on an embankment and you can see glistening pools, rivulets and spongy peatland made up of sphagnum mosses, ling heather, asphodel and butterwort.
Formed over 10,000 years, the peat is over 30ft deep. In the 1970s and 80s, Government tax incentives encouraged forestry. Swathes of bog that had been treeless were drained, gouged with deep furrows, and planted with fast-growing conifers. The Flow Country became a battleground between pro-plantation developers and conservationists fearing the destruction of such a rare, undisturbed habitat.
The area is now being allowed to recover, which is good for the planet – peat is a superb carbon store – and native fauna. Merlin, short-eared owls and golden eagles hunt over the mosses and pools. Divers, plover and greenshank feed and nest in the wetlands. Microhabitats support insects, spiders, amphibians, reptiles and small mammals such as shrews. In February 2023, a bid was submitted to Unesco to recognise this magical region as a World Heritage Site.
Under lowering sunshine, the tough grasses looked golden. It reminded me of the Patagonian steppe. When I first travelled around South America I would look for analogues of the landscapes of my Lancashire home. Now I find myself spotting little Patagonias in my homeland. Our northern end of the world is as beguiling as Argentina and Chile’s fin del mundo.
Wick is a solid, stone-built town with a special atmosphere. Its name derives from Vik – indicative of a distant Nordic past – but it grew to prominence in the 19th century as a fishing port. It is divided into two. On the left bank of the river is a town centre that has seen better days. For every shop still open, there are three empty. I checked into Mackays Hotel, on the other side of the river. It’s a cosy place with great steaks and whiskies, located on Ebenezer Place, the world’s shortest street. When night fell or rain blew in, it was my refuge.
Rising up behind the hotel was Pulteneytown, the oldest planned industrial settlement. Thomas Telford built the harbour in 1803-11, adding a tidy grid of houses for workers and managers. Bang in the middle of the upper section is the Old Pulteney distillery; I went on a tour of the mash tuns, pot stills and dark warehouses, followed by a tasting. It is strange to find yourself drinking single malts in the afternoon, but not at all unpleasant.
Nearby was the town’s other great attraction: Wick Heritage Centre, which tells the story of its prominence as Europe’s biggest herring fishing harbour through a mix of artefacts: a kippering kiln, militaria old and new (Wick suffered the first daytime bombing raid on mainland Britain during the Second World War), a fishing boat and the Johnston Collection of superb photographs.
The close-ups of fishermen were moving, and the panoramic shots of the harbour filled with barrels of salted “silI ver darlings” magnificent. Thousands of men came here to cash in, spending their downtime in local bars. The town got a reputation for heavy drinking, fights and prostitution. Temperance campaigners joined forces with local wives fed up with being handed empty wage packets. Prohibition was eventually imposed from 1922 until 1947.
I mentioned to Donald Henderson, chair of the Wick Society, that the landscape reminded me of Patagonia. He nodded and mentioned, almost as an aside, that many people from Caithness emigrated to Patagonia to work on sheep farms. The following day a book called From Caithness to Patagonia by Ian Leith was left at my hotel reception.
A mid-morning walk took me along the coast, passing through the harbour and an old quarry squatted by fulmars. There were lobster creels and a few boats, but the boom today is wind power; turbine and cabling equipment filled the docksides. I walked past The Trinkie, a natural sea-water lido on a shelf of bare rock, and came to a castle known as the Old Man. It was an atmospheric spot, with birds soaring on the cold thermals and mist and mizzle isolating me and the lichen-dappled ruin from the rest of the world.
I took the bus to Thurso. There was the option of a crack-of-dawn train but
didn’t want to hurry my Full Scottish. I only knew two things about my destination. One, that it was the northernmost town in mainland Britain. Two, that it grew bigger and got richer thanks to the Dounreay nuclear testing and experimental site, which came on stream – or “went critical”, as the jargon goes – in the late 1950s.
It was an airier, livelier town than Wick and had a nice beach. It is apparently a popular “cold surf ” hangout. Again, I found a welcoming hotel, the Pentland, and a great little museum. I learnt a third thing: that Thurso’s etymology contains an allusion to Thor, god of storms, sacred groves and trees
You can’t come here without ticking off Dunnet Head – Britain’s most northerly point. I spent time with Martin Murray, who runs a nearby gin distillery. He is rebuilding an old grain mill at Castletown to make whisky, using the famous Caithness flagstone (used at Ground Zero in New York) and conserving its original features.
The Wolfburn and North Point Distilleries – which opened in 2013 and 2020 near Thurso, and the even newer 8 Doors Distillery at John O’Groats – are transforming the highest corner of the Highlands into a whisky hotspot. I tried a drop of the 8 Doors’s peated whiskey in situ. Afterwards I met up with American expat Jay Wilson, who created the John O’Groats Trail about a decade ago. We did the short hike along the coast to Duncansby Head, the northeasternmost point.
It was a more than fitting end to my mini-odyssey. Jay showed me some geos – deep gullies where the sea rushes in – and led me across a patch of carpet bog. It rolls and shifts just like a soft rug. Flow Country is a perfect name. At the promontory, beneath the lighthouse, I looked back and saw, beyond a wall of impressive cliffs, the Noss Head lighthouse near Wick.
But which way was I to look – down or up? Thurso was far north – as far from King’s Cross as Budapest is from Paris. But my gaze was drawn towards Stroma and the Orkneys. Why do travellers yearn to go to the ends of lines?
I think the urge is strongest in wideopen landscapes. Perhaps Thor came on shore and flattened Caithness and Sutherland by stamping his god-sized feet just to keep us wanting more.
Chris Moss’s trip was supported by Visit Scotland (visitscotland.com) and Caledonian Sleeper (sleeper.scot).
Mackays Hotel has B&B doubles from £115; the Pentland Hotel from £88. Tours at Old Pulteney cost from £15pp.
Further information: theflowcountry.org.uk; venture-north.co.uk; and scotch-whisky.org.uk/2175.