John O'Groats

The signpost and the Firth

The signpost by the harbour has marked the Land's End–John O'Groats journey since 1964, and photographing it costs nothing. The man who first put one up here charged for the picture.

John O'Groats is smaller than its reputation; the name reaches a good deal further than the village does. What you find where the A99 runs north out of Wick and simply stops is a scattered coastal community — a cluster around the harbour, a second focus by the post office and the Seaview Hotel, and the fast grey water of the Pentland Firth running out towards Stroma and Orkney.

Local beer and the Seaview

The Seaview's bar is the most northerly pub on the British mainland. It pours John O'Groats Brewery ales and Highland Brewing Company beer, keeps more than 130 malt whiskies behind the bar, and smokes its own salmon in-house. Dogs are welcome. Andrew, who runs it, was born here and has had a hand in most things — the development trust, the mill, the village hall, the football club.

The brewery has its tasting room in the Last House, the low stone cottage beside the signpost. Allan, Simon and John started it in the old fire station in 2015 with Andrew, four barrels at a time, and moved into the Last House in 2019. The beers take their names from the tides and features of the Firth: First Footing, Deep Groat, Duncansby, Swelkie, Merry Men of Mey, Liddel Eddy.

Food and the Last House

There is more food here than the setting suggests. Café Groats does locally landed seafood with a view across to Orkney. The Cabin down at the harbour — also known as Geoff's Burger Van — does fish and chips, bacon rolls and burgers. Stacks Coffee House at the craft centre does home-made cakes and comfort food, with an under-fives menu and half portions for older children. Flavours, next door, scoops Capaldi's ice cream. Puffin Croft, run by Cara Young, sells home-grown produce, eggs, sausages and Caithness-raised plants toughened to the weather, with farm animals to look at when conditions allow.

The Last House predates 1700. Renovation turned up ship's ribs reused in a wall, a cool storage recess called a bink, a quern and a portrait of the Rev Roderick MacGregor. For about 75 years, from around 1885 to 1960, an upturned boat called Brittania stood beside it, bought for two pounds by a resident named Campbell Laird and pressed into service as a store, hen house, pig house, toilet and hotel laundry.

Canisbay, Duncansby and the mill

The village takes its name from Jan de Groot, a Dutch ferryman said to have built an eight-sided house with eight doors and an eight-sided table, so that no one in his quarrelsome family could claim the head. His tombstone is kept in the porch of Canisbay Church nearby, where the Queen Mother worshipped most summers for almost fifty years while staying at the nearby Castle of Mey.

For walkers, the cliff path east to Duncansby Head — the true north-eastern corner of the mainland — is a 5.25-mile circuit past a blowhole, an arch, a Stevenson lighthouse and the two sea stacks, with seabirds on the ledges. The grain mill, its machinery still in place, ground oats and bere until the last miller died in 2001; a trust restored it and reopened it for guided visits in 2025.

Arriving and staying longer

Buses run west to Thurso on Stagecoach service 80, and the nearest train is at Wick. Many visitors come for the sign, take the photograph and move on. The ones who stay get the evening light on the Firth.