AROUND the top of Scotland

Dundee to Stromness

If this journey were an ascent, the mountaintop would naturally be the Orkney Islands, and the last camp on the route would be Wick. We arrived there ahead of strong easterly winds, which might have prevented us from entering the harbour and sent us scuttling all the way back across the Moray Firth. The lifeboat crew were preparing for their Harbour Day. There’s a good reason for lifeboats around here – the Pentland Firth has a fearsome reputation. The Admiralty Sailing Directions from 1935 says “when a swell is opposed to the tidal stream, a sea is raised which can scarcely be imagined by those who have never experienced it”.

Wick was a welcome surprise. Its large sheltered harbours and the town above were designed by Thomas Telford on instruction from Sir William Pulteney, governor of the British Fisheries Society. It became the world’s largest herring port, with over 1,000 fishing vessels in the summer. Peak herring was in 1867 when it is said that 50 million “silver darlings” were gutted and packed in just two days by 3,500 herring