John o' Groats

John o' Groats stands at Britain's northeastern corner, a windswept settlement that has become synonymous with the idea of journey's end. For generations, travellers have made the pilgrimage here from Land's End, 874 miles to the south, to stand beside the famous signpost and gaze across the Pentland Firth to the distant silhouette of Orkney. It is a place of arrival and departure, of wild seas and even wilder skies, where the Scottish mainland finally surrenders to the ocean.

The settlement itself is modest: a harbour, a hotel, a scattering of buildings clustered against the elements. But its location is anything but ordinary. The Pentland Firth churns between here and Orkney, one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the British Isles, where Atlantic and North Sea collide in a chaos of tides and currents. On clear days, the islands of Stroma and the Orkney archipelago seem tantalisingly close; in storms, the horizon disappears entirely behind curtains of spray and rain.

Yet the true magic of John o' Groats lies just beyond the village. A two-mile walk along the cliffs leads to Duncansby Head, the actual northeastern tip of mainland Britain, where spectacular sea stacks rise from the churning waters and puffins nest on the clifftops in summer. The landscape here is elemental: green turf dropping away to black rocks, seabirds wheeling overhead, and the constant soundtrack of wind and wave. Whether you arrive having cycled from Cornwall or simply driven up for the day, John o' Groats delivers that unmistakable sense of having reached the edge of the world.