For such a desolate nowhere place, John o’ Groats attracts people purely by virtue of its location (Land’s End is similar. It’s a nasty little tourist trap, unlike the Minack Theatre nearby, which is a much more interesting place to visit and has a Telegraph museum round the corner from it too).
To give you an idea of how busy it can get at JoG, as well as the TRAT crew, I know of two other people who may reach John o’ Groats at roughly the same time as us. One is setting off by bike in just under two weeks, the other set off on foot in March.
The walker is my partner Bryony’s dad Ben and he started walking on the 19th of March. If he is still on his schedule, he will currently be somewhere north of Glasgow, if the weather is as good as it is here then he will be seeing Scotland at its best.
To give you an idea of just how far it is to walk, especially if like Ben you are sensibly taking more scenic routes, on the day we start riding (21st June), Ben will be roughly level with what will be our start position on day six, our final day of riding, somewhere south of Inverness.
In some ways, Ben’s trip is possibly the ideal way to see the country – on a bike you see more than in a car, on foot you see even more and go via places that a road bike can’t. I’ll confess I’m jealous – one day I would like to ride round the UK coast but take it nice and slow and see places rather than speeding past.
The Race Against Time 