To Inverness... and beyond!

It was raining when I reached Inverness, a cold, heavy rain falling from a sullen sky. Not so much "Welcome to the Highlands!" as "The Highlands, you're welcome to them...", but I was heading further north, much further north.

I like trains, as regular readers will be aware. It's not about locomotives or rolling stock - that has little attraction unless it offers something I might personally enjoy - but about the journey. And the four hours and eighteen minutes that it takes to get to Wick, at the furthest extent of the Far North Line, takes you through some of the remotest country served by train.

And is it remote! The relatively gentle country of Ross-shire yields to increasingly rugged country, where sheep are fewer and the lambing is just starting, before you enter the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland, a truly bleak, if majestic, place of bog, covering 1,500 square miles.

Colin Rosenstiel tells me that, in years past, the train used to divide at Georgemas Junction, with one part reversing before veering off to Thurso, whilst the other half continued to Wick. Nowadays, with only two carriages, it serves Thurso first before reversing back through Georgemas Junction and on to Wick.

I had planned a brief explore of Wick and arrived to find that it was still raining. Not a promising start, but it wasn't destined to get any better. Caron Lindsay, who spent some of her younger years in the town, tells me that it has rather lost its way, a shadow of its former self, and that seems pretty accurate, although there are few places that benefit from rain and low cloud. I was somewhat relieved that I only had just over an hour...

It was raining in Thurso too but, having checked into my hotel, I needed a good walk, and so went to explore. Like Wick, it seemed that most people had deserted in search of somewhere more pleasant, but I doggedly walked around, looking to see what might reward further exploration in the morning.

After a decent night's sleep, I returned, guided by the hotel proprietor towards 'Caithness Horizons', a relatively new museum housed in the old Town Hall. It has an interesting exhibition on the nuclear facility at Dounreay, not too far down the road, but the highlight is a twenty minute video on Caithness highlighting the unusual countryside - well worth a visit if you unexpectedly find yourself that far north. Remember, it's seven hundred miles from London King's Cross to Thurso by train.

But I had miles to go before I slept, and I was bound for Inverness again on the lunchtime train...