John o' Groats
John o' Groats
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 John o' Groats House |
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 John o' Groats
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| John o' Groats shown within the Caithness area | |
| Population | 300 |
| OS grid reference | ND380734 |
| Council area | |
| Lieutenancy area | |
| Country | Scotland |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | WICK |
| Postcode district | KW1 |
| Dialling code | 01955 |
| Police | Scottish |
| Fire | Scottish |
| Ambulance | Scottish |
| EU Parliament | Scotland |
| UK Parliament | |
| Scottish Parliament | |
John o' Groats (Scottish Gaelic: Taigh Iain Ghròt) is a village lying 2.5 miles (4 km) NE of the village of Canisbay, Caithness, in the far north of Scotland. John o' Groats lies on Britain's northeastern tip, and is popular with tourists as one end of the longest distance between two inhabited British points on the mainland, with Land's End in Cornwall lying 876 miles (1,410 km) to the southwest. It is not quite the most northerly point on the island of Britain (nearby Dunnet Head is further north).
John o' Groats is 690 miles (1,110 km) from London, 280 miles (450 km) from Edinburgh, 6 miles (9.7 km) from the Orkney Isles and 2,200 miles (3,500 km) from the North Pole. It is 4.25 miles (6.84 km) from the uninhabited island of Stroma.
A passenger ferry operates from John o' Groats to Burwick on South Ronaldsay in Orkney.
The settlement takes its name from Jan de Groot, a Dutchman who once plied a ferry from the Scottish mainland to Orkney, which had recently been acquired from Norway by King James IV. Local legend has that the "o' Groats" refers to John's charge of one groat for use of his ferry, but it actually derives from the Dutch de groot, meaning "the large". People from John o' Groats are known as "Groaters".
The name John o' Groats has a particular resonance because it is often used as a starting or ending point for cycles, walks and charitable events to and from Land's End (at the extreme south-western tip of the Cornish peninsula in England). The phrase Land's End to John o' Groats is frequently heard both as a literal journey (being the longest possible in Great Britain) and as a metaphor for great or all-encompassing distance, similar to the American phrase .
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Wikipedia