Day 1: Inverness - Helmsdale

It turns out it's really difficult to sleep on sleeper trains, so we arrived in Inverness bright and early feeling a bit like zombies. After a bit of a mix-up with picks ups we got upgraded on our hire car and made our way out of Inverness on to the beautiful East Coast. Our first stop was dolphin-spotting at Fortrose; a place I used to go when I was young, and thankfully remains completely unchanged. We sat in the sunshine on the point, and sure enough the Cromarty pod of dolphins swam past. I like to think my adopted dolphin Rusty was still among them. After lunch and a wander in Cromarty, we continued up the coast to Helmsdale where we stayed for the night in a gorgeous b&b. The extreme tiredness and lack of sleep over the last five nights caught up with me on the way and I had to struggle to keep my eyes open, battling a horrible eye-headache. We couldn't have hoped for a better place to rest our heads though and had to fight the urge to fall asleep at 6pm! We somehow managed to make it into Helmsdale for a fairly poor dinner, but a much better walk around the harbour, a game of university challenge and then asleep by 9pm!