I was born on raised on the far north coast of Scotland. From a tourist perspective, John O'Groats is the famous landmark in the area as being the northly point of the UK mainland, but its actually a little further along the coast at a place called Dunnet Head.
There is a beautiful light house there, obviously called Dunnet head Lighthouse, which is perched right on edge of the cliffs, looking over the Pentland Firth, which is the body of water that separates the mainland and the Orkney Islands. Its the Orkney Islands that you can see behind the lighthouse in the pic above.
The cliffs are rather high on the head, at around atleast 200+ feet, which makes going to the edge to take photos a tad scary !
The pic above is taken from Dunnet Beach looking over towards the Head. The lighthouse is not visible from this view, and you can only see part of the Head from this angle. But it helps to show how it juts out from the mainland into the Atlantic.
The lighthouse really is spectacular, especially on a clear day. It was built in 1831 by Robert Stevenson. Back then it would have been operated by lighthouse keepers, but today it is automated.
The lighthouses position high on the cliffs gives it a huge visible range of around 26 miles, which is quite impressive. The light is there to guide ships passing through the Pentland Firth. There are quite a few other lights dotted around the Firth as it contains quite a lot of treacherous rocky shores.
The picture above looks westward along the headland. As can be seen its quite barren. It has marsh land, and is not great for crops or anything else really. And as can be seen there are no trees - its too windy and they cant survive ! This is a common problem on the north coast of Scotland and also on the Orkney Islands in particular.
The pics I'm showing here were taken over 2 different visits (hence the varying weather conditions !). The sunny ones were taken in October 2010, and its quite rare to get such lovely weather up there that far into the year - it wasnt even windy up there that day which is unheard of at that time of year !
You can see the difference with the pic above, often when you visit, cloud banks stop you from seeing anything !
Well its one of those places that you just have to stop at if you are ever in the far north - and you just have got to keep your fingers crossed to get some great views over to Orkney, and to also not have all your hair blown off. Good luck !
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Can't believe how calm the water is!
Been on the ferry many times when it is fluffing rough!
Aye, some days its completely crazy there - we were very lucky that day considering it was October !
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So beautiful… love the views. And that lighthouse is just stunning…
The sun beams are amazing.
Well captured @hoosie 👋🏻😊