There is a signpost. People come for the signpost. It points to Land's End - 874 miles by the most direct walking route - and to Edinburgh, and Orkney, and New York. The original was installed in 1964 by a private company that figured out you could charge tourists to be photographed next to it, and charge them again to add a custom pointer to their hometown. The same company made a notoriously tacky mess of Land's End at the other end of the country. They finally quit in 2013, and a new free signpost replaced theirs in 2015. You can stand in front of it now without paying anyone. You can even add your own homemade sign held up by a friend, like a hitchhiker on an on-ramp. Just do not climb on it. Someone tried that in 2020 and snapped a pointer.

John o' Groats is not actually the most northerly point of the British mainland. Dunnet Head, fourteen miles west, holds that title. It is not the most northerly settlement either - little places around the Castle of Mey can probably make a case. It is not even the most northerly point of the United Kingdom, which is way over the horizon in Shetland. What it actually is, narrowly and correctly, is the northern terminus of the UK mainland highway system - the end of the A99, which was the original A9 before the route was reorganised in 1997. That is a rather technical thing to be famous for. The village makes up for it with views, gift shops, and a fish-and-chip takeaway called The Cabin.

The whole tourist identity of John o' Groats was invented in the 1960s, when a series of long-distance walkers and cyclists and assorted eccentrics began making the journey from one end of Britain to the other - either Land's End to John o' Groats (LeJog) or the reverse (JogLe). Around 900 miles by the most direct route, much longer if you wander. Walking, cycling, running, horseback, public transport - and increasingly weird vehicles invented purely for the publicity. The trips were filmed in grainy black and white and shown on the news, and the legend grew. Every year now, hundreds attempt the journey. Some are raising money for charity. Some are working through grief or marking a retirement. All of them, when they finally arrive, look slightly stunned that they actually made it.

The real wonder of John o' Groats is the view. Step away from the signpost and look north. The Pentland Firth churns away in front of you, a tidal channel where the Atlantic floods then drains the North Sea twice a day, generating some of the fiercest currents in the world. Beyond it, the Orkney Islands. Hoy rises hill-shadowed and cloud-wreathed to the northwest. South Ronaldsay sits low and pastoral to the east. Between, the small uninhabited islets - Stroma just two miles out, Swona further west, Muckle Skerry hardly more than a rock with a Stevenson lighthouse. Sailors here speak of the Men of Mey, columns of water that stand up when ebb tide meets a howling westerly. Pity any boat caught in that, the old lifeboat crews would say.

The Castle of Mey, six miles west, was the Queen Mother's beloved Caithness home from 1952 until her death. Jan de Groot the ferryman lies buried in the kirkyard at Canisbay nearby. East along the cliff path lies Duncansby Head - the actual northeasternmost corner of Britain - with its 1924 Stevenson lighthouse and the towering Stacks of Duncansby just offshore. South along the coast you hit Wick, and the long string of Iron Age brochs and Neolithic cairns that make Caithness one of the densest concentrations of prehistory in Britain. The road network ends here. The land does not.