More photos from Caithness

The old Macbraynes bus livery brought back memories of the 1960s and 70s!!  Caledonian Macbraynes ,or Cal Mac as they are known these days, was sponsoring the Mòd so the old bus sat outside the school venue all week.

One of the mascots brought to the Mod was this teddy!  Another was a meercat in a kilt!

 

 

 

 

Not sure what the pink feathers were all about though!

Obviously this is a road sign or five! John o’ Groats isn’t that far away, a famous name for long distance walkers and cyclists, etc. who start there in a bid to reach the south west tip of Britain at Land’s End, several hudred miles later  No mean feat!  More like sore feet!  The Castle of Mey was the Queen Mother’s home and is now a visitor centre.  

 

This is part of the road sign for Tongue, also on the north coast. At first I thought the sign was getting worn and bits were flaking off but on closer inspection  the bits of light green were found to be moss!  Why it grew around the edge of the letters I don’t know, as there would appear to be no difference in the surface of the sign, only the colour, but there’s bound to be an explanation – something to do with the reflective nature of the sign perhaps?  I thought it rather pretty!

A view or two round Thurso now, this is the Thurso river – not the river Thurso but the Thurso river, which even has its own website – for the fishing!  Not very high at the moment, it is rather attractive as it flows gently down to the sea not that far away, especially with the trees showing their autumn tints. 

You know you’re not far from the sea when you see a large flock of gulls on a bank of river stones!

 

Looking east down from the High School you can see the cliffs of the north coast beyond the town.  Following the coast in this  direction would take you round Dunnet Head the most northerly point of the British mainland, and on round to John o’Groats.  The square tower with the points on top is St Peter’s and St Andrew’s Church.

In town I came across this building with grey slate slabs engraved with local dialect on the wall.

Scorries are seagulls (see below), cownin is crying out loudly.  puckle can mean ‘some’ or ‘an amount of'’, but do seagulls cry out for rain?  Maybe they do!  I know they call out for lots of other reasons!!

 

 

 

‘Fill as a partan’ will likely mean the same as ‘Fu as a wulk’, meaning ‘very drunk’!  A partan is a crab and a wulk is a whelk!  Strange where we get our colloquialisms from.  I suppose crabs walk sideways like drunks tend to do.  As for the other sign, all I can say is Thirsa  probably means Thurso.  Brosy means something sort of porridgey, and bonnie generally means pretty, but I can’t work out the lassagies bit, nor have I the least idea of what the whole thing means!

Walking back to the hotel to collect our luggage the squawking (or cownin) of these starlings made me look up!  The line-up along the roof top was actually about twice as long as this!    Why, I wonder, would they all be there at that time of day.  It was nowhere near roosting time!  Strange!

Anyway, it’s definitely roosting time for me now.  I need to catch up on some sleep!  That’s the trouble being a night owl like  me!   I go to bed late and can’t wake up in the morning- and after the trip up to Caithness, I am still even more tired than usual!   So, to bed!

Talk again soon.