John O'Groats and the legend of Jan de Groot

John O’Groats is a Scottish village at the northern end of the longest possible direct route on the mainland of Great Britain, with Cornwall’s Land’s End marking the other end. The settlement is not particularly inspiring, consisting of a few cottages, a hotel, some bed-and-breakfast establishments and gift shops, a garage-cum-post office, a signpost pointing to various places including New York and – that’s just about it! It has been described as “Scotland’s most dismal town”, which is fairly accurate apart from the place not even being a town! 

John O’Groats is not actually at the most northern or north-eastern point of Scotland – you need to go a few more miles to Dunnet Head to reach the former or Duncansby Head for the latter. 

The name of the village is certainly a bit unusual. It is a corruption of Jan de Groot, who was a Dutchman who lived here in the late 15^th century. He operated a ferry service to the Orkney Islands, which was quite a profitable venture. He had a large family, the members of which looked forward to inheriting the business when Jan died.

The problem was that the junior de Groots became so obsessed with the matter of which of them would become the new ferry master that Jan decided to take a leaf out of the book of the legendary ancient king of Britain, Arthur. 

According to the old stories, King Arthur sat all his knights at a round table so that none of them could claim precedence by being at the head of the table. Jan de Groot’s family comprised eight people, so he built an eight-sided house, inside which was an eight-sided table. That is the legend, although there is absolutely no evidence to support it. 

The hotel, which overlooks the Pentland Firth that separates Caithness from the Orkneys, has a tower with an eight-sided roof, but that was just a piece of whimsy on the part of the building’s Victorian architect.

The idea of walking from John O’Groats to Lands End (or vice versa) dates back to at least 1871, when the feat was accomplished by John and Robert Naylor, a pair of brothers. It was not until 1916 that they published their account of the trip, which was not via the most direct route to judge by the book’s title: “From John O’Groats to Lands End: Or, 1372 Miles on Foot”. The route usually taken today (if sticking to the roads) is 874 miles, but walkers generally use off-road footpaths and can walk as much as 1200 miles as a result.

The Naylors recounted their search for Jan de Groot’s octagonal house, but all they found was “a few mounds of earth covered with grass”. During their stay they were shown a book dated 1839 that contained a poem written by a previous searcher who had also been unsuccessful.

So it could well be that the story of the octagonal table and house was fiction from start to finish, or maybe the house existed but the table did not? 

All one can say for certain is that Jan de Groot ran ferries to the Orkneys, and it is still possible, during the summer months, to take a boat from John O’Groats to Burwick at the southern end of South Ronaldsay, which is the closest of the Orkney Islands to the Scottish mainland. The journey takes 40 minutes and is accessible only to pedestrians and cyclists.

© John Welford