The lounge bar of the Mey Hotel was once the village shop, and its dining room the store behind it. The building is a former coaching inn, around two hundred years old, run now by a husband and wife who give resident guests priority at dinner, so a call ahead is sensible if you are staying elsewhere and want a table. The kitchen sends out Scrabster-landed haddock in beer batter with hand-cut triple-cooked chips, and haggis, tatties and neeps under a whisky, pepper and mustard sauce. The bar pours beers from breweries at John o'Groats and on Orkney, spirits from Dunnet Bay and North Point, and whiskies including Wolfburn, Old Pulteney and 8 Doors. On selected Saturdays the chef, Chris Duckham, runs a Côte Du Nord tasting evening. Five acres of woodland behind the hotel are open to guests, which counts for something here.
It counts because Mey has few trees, and not much else by way of shelter. This is the flat north-coast plain of Caithness: pasture, wind, the Pentland Firth a short way off, Dunnet Head to the west and Orkney across the water. At Longoe Farm the northerly winds salt-blast the barley and bend the surviving trees into a permanent lean.
The village's day out sits just outside it. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother saw the Castle of Mey advertised for sale in 1952, dilapidated and facing demolition, bought it, and restored its old name. It had been Barrogill Castle since George Sinclair, fourth Earl of Caithness, built the Z-plan tower after acquiring the lands in 1567; during the Second World War it served as a rest home for officers. Hew Lorimer carved the Queen Mother's cypher above a dining-room window, using stone from a local quarry reopened specially for the work. The cannons on the lawn are Napoleonic, brought up from a cliff fort nearby.
The visitor centre has a gift shop and tearoom, a little way from the village core. The shop sells chutney made from the castle garden, the *A Taste of Mey* cookbook, and scarves and throws in the Queen Mother Check, a pattern taken from an outfit displayed in the castle library. The tearoom does homemade cakes and snacks, locally sourced, with vegetarian and gluten-free options.
Children can be pointed at the animal centre, where there are unusual sheep, bantams, ducks, geese, rabbits, and Buff Orpington chickens associated with the Queen Mother. You can feed the sheep and chickens and try milking Daisy, a wooden cow. The Longoe Farm herd has been Aberdeen Angus since 1964, and the farm keeps North Country Cheviot sheep, of which the Queen Mother wrote: "I have seen no reason to change my opinion over the years as it is still the best all round breed."
For walking, a signposted path west of the village leads to the James MacIntyre Memorial Hide on the Loch of Mey, wheelchair accessible with parking at an old ruin and a view over wildfowl and waders; it is open through the year bar the 31st of December. The castle grounds are flatter still, about fifteen to twenty minutes on foot from the top of the drive, and dogs are welcome on leads in the grounds, though not in the walled garden, the animal centre or the castle itself. Six miles east, John o'Groats and Duncansby Head give a longer outing: a clifftop circuit of grassy tops and boggy patches past Sannick Bay, the Glupe blowhole, the Stevenson lighthouse and the Duncansby Stacks, with the cliff edges exposed and best kept a distance from.
Mey stands on the A836. The nearest station is Thurso, about fourteen miles off, with Stagecoach route 80 running between there and John o'Groats; from Gills Bay the Pentland Ferries crossing reaches St Margaret's Hope on Orkney in a little over an hour.
The parish church is at Canisbay, a short way off, Category A listed and medieval in origin though largely rebuilt in the seventeenth century. Inside there is a cruciform plan, a square west tower, and a Groat-family mural stone dated 1568. Some of the early gravestones were re-cut by the Caithness sculptor John Nicolson of Nybster, who in 1868 carved a monument there to his own mother.