Day 6 - ​​..and on the 6th day ...we had a well-earned rest

Our day at the top was a day of two halves. We spent the morning walking, once again plagued by midges and having the horror of twice meeting a sheep who appeared to be losing all of its insides from its bottom. Very unpleasant but the sheep looked completely happy. Very odd. We walked up to Duncansby Head to see the stacks and once again Chris did some seabird watching getting very excited when he saw some bird, whose name I can’t remember chasing some other birds that I’ve also forgotten the name of! We encountered a lot more people on this day but it was still very quiet.

We spent the afternoon at the Castle of Mey, home of the late Queen Mother. We’d planned to only visit the garden but changed our minds and I am so glad we did. What a wonderful place and so interesting. The staff who are presumably volunteers are so knowledgeable and have such interesting stories of life there. We were greeted at the door by the wonderful Nancy who was born and brought up on the estate farm. She was quite a character but so completely fascinating we spent ages talking to her. The whole set up of the Castle was excellent from the lovely shop and café to the gardens. It is well worth a visit.

Time now to finish off a lovely day with another Coop meal – we had gone for minimal preparation on all our food so it was a pasta bake with local bread and a delicious salad and another bottle of wine. Take a seat and time to watch the sun go down again – but instead a sea fog came down and we found we couldn’t see beyond the end of our decking! More disturbingly then we started to see bright lights coming at us through the mist – being a horror film fan and having both seen Stephen’s King ‘The Mist’ this was very disturbing! It took a while for us to work out the farmer was actually harvesting in the mist!
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We loved Natural Retreats and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them. The lodge was clean and spacious and felt very luxurious. The welcome hamper was extremely good quality with lots of lovely fresh local produce in. The beds were comfy and of course the washer and dryer were great as it allowed us to repack fresh clothes for the next 4 days. I felt it worked really well breaking the journey here and it was nice to have a day off from all the driving.
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