Aberdeen to Orkney via the North West Coast

By Johan - After celebrating the finish of our bike tour with Andrea and Steve in Aberdeen we swapped our bikes for a Vauxhall Corsa to travel around Scotland. It turned out to be a good call given the weather and hills this beautiful country has to offer. The highland and coastal scenery is simply awesome; absolutely beautiful on a good day and mystical when the stormy or misty weather moves in. The weather literally changes hourly, you never know what you are going to get. Even the weather forecast seems to be an absolute guess on most days; “Variable” would be the safest bet for sure. 

Our first stop was Aviemore, the gateway to Craingorms National Park. The road from Aberdeen takes you right over the Highlands into this beatiful park.

We noticed a sign “Working sheep Dogs” and checked out the daily 4pm working dog show, put on by a local farmer (Leault farm) who also happens to be a multi national champion dog trainer. Very impressive to see Neil Ross in action with his pack of upto 9 dogs!  Simply unbelievable how he manages to command these dogs giving them simple (individual) commands with a combination of verbal commands and whistle tunes unique to each dog. In no time the dogs bring the sheep together from a large field based on a few simple commands and some impressive natural collaboration between the dogs. 

We visited the Highland Games in Drumnadrochit. Very cool to see the community come together and show off their skills and compete in dancing, piping, log throwing, tug-of-war, etc. 

And ofcourse the pipe band is one of the main events during the Highland games - opening and closing the ceremonies. 

From the central highlands we ventured via Ullapool to the North West Coast. It’s a spectacular coast line with some awesome ocean vistas. 



Luckily we also had a few beautiful days. On these days the scenery becomes even more spectacular because you can see the several “layers” of islands and ranges in the distance  - definitely the best way to spend the late afternoon watching the sun set. 

We caught the “ferry” to Handa island to go and see the puffins that live on this island, only to be told on arrival that they had already left for the season 😳 - major bummer, but nevertheless the island is beautiful in its own right too and offers a great walk around the island over board walks  along the high sea cliffs and rock stacks. 

The cliffs of Handa island. There are several places in Scotland where you can see these coastal rock formations where the ocean has carved away the cliffs to create these massive stacks. 

Never a dull moment in the Scottish sky. 


We followed the coast around to the north eastern point where we visited the stacks of Duncansby near John o’Groats before catching the ferry to Orkney. 


We traveled to the Orkney Islands to visit Fiona, who Deborah used to work with at Auckland Hospital. Fiona is born and raised in these parts and still has a lot of family in the area. 

The island has a lot of ancient historic places built by the people that lived here 5000 years ago. In the prehistoric settlement of Skara Brae the living quarters are sunk into the landscape to offer protection from the winds and harsh winter conditions. Amazing to visit these structures that are older than the pyramids in Egypt and even older than Stonehenge. 


The Ring of Brodgar is another impressive prehistoric site. Believed to be an important public meeting place for rituals of some sort. There are several of these sites in the area. 

We visited the island of Sanday, north of the Orkney mainland. Unfortunately it rained the entire day so we weren’t able to enjoy the beautiful beaches but we did manage to visit and enter this prehistoric grave site which once again was impressive to see it is still standing after many thousands of years. (For the rest of the day we ended up playing pool in the local pub which made it a great day despite the weather.)

Peter and Brian were one of the unexpected high lights of our visit to Orkney. We had never heard of a “Wooly Pig” before, so when Fiona mentioned these were for real we had to go and find them. Peter and Brian are two Hungarian Wooley Pigs who live on the side of the main road near Kirkness. Both cute and scary because when they get grumpy and show off their tusks you sure as hell don’t want to get too close. 

In Kirkness (Orkney) we visited the Highland Park Whiskey distillery. The tour of this renowned distillery was very cool. Great stories and interesting to hear how much effort goes into creating a fine Whiskey. They have their own peat field to dig up the peat they use for the furnace to smoke the grain (malt). They even grow their own oak trees in Spain and North America to ensure they get the right flavours from their barrels! 

Kirkness cathedral is impressive and has a real medieval feeling to it when you go through it. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Orkney and “hanging” out with Fiona. It was so cool to stay at her place for four days and enjoy the spoils of a solid roof over our heads and a comfy lounge and bed. We also ended up “sampling” some of the local whiskeys and Gins which was hard work ofcourse 😁. (Boutique Gins are very popular here)

After catching the ferry back to the Scottish mainland we travelled back to the west coast, south from Ullapool and then on to the Isle of Skye. The highlight on Skye was definetly “The  Quiraing”. It’s a mountain range with dramatic rocks and land slides creating a very unique and mystical land scape. 

The Quiraing track really is adventurous (but safe)  and very rewarding - a must do when visiting Skye for sure. 

From Skye we went back to the mainland to meet up with Andrea and Steve again to “bag some Munros”