Sunday 12th September 1819
Sunday Sept 12th Immediately after breakfast we called on Mr & Mrs McCloy to whom we had a letter of introduction they are very agreeable people we then proceeded with the barouche to Thurso over a most barren & flat country the view of this bay is beautiful on entering this town but the town small & dirty on arriving we procured ponies & rode three miles to see the Clet Rock I can give no idea of the sublimity of this object it is a rock of immense height & rude appearance divided from others equally fine by a narrow chasm where in rough weather the sea rushes with inconceivable force the striking effect of the others is produced by the ocean being seen through chasms which rise up to the surface of the rocks having passed some time in viewing these great curiosities my brothers rode some
distance further to see some other rocks which they describe is very fine we then returned to the Hotel which is a comfortable Inn
OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTS:
Mrs and Mr McCloy: Presumably the Coplands visited the McCloys after breakfasting at their inn at Wick. The McCloys may have had property in the town or nearby.
Thurso: See yesterday’s entry, click here
Clett Rock, a solitary sea rock about 30m high of Caithness old red sandstone and away from the mainland by a 15m wide channel. It is famous for the weird feeling that you are going uphill when you drive round it in a boat. On stormy days the spray will be forced up through blow holes. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clett_Rock_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1293.jpg
1998: Clett Rock. By Dorcas Sinclair. This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. The copyright on this image is owned by Dorcas Sinclair and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clett_Rock_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1293.jpg
Inn: It appears that the Coplands returned to their inn at Wick every evening. However Lucy has already classed it as good. Now she refers to this night’s inn as a Hotel which is a comfortable Inn. Has she failed to mention checking into a more local hotel? If the more local Forss House Hotel was operating at the time it is possible that the family would have stayed there (see https://www.forsshousehotel.co.uk/ ) although we think it more likely that they returned to Wick, especially as they returned there on the 13th and 14th and breakfasted with the McCloys on the 14th.
From the Forss House Hotel website https://www.forsshousehotel.co.uk/offers
Can you help us?
The McCloys: It would be helpful to find out who the McCloys were and whether they lived in Wick or nearby.
Old Regency Prints, Pictures an Coaching maps: Do you have access to any prints or pictures showing what town and country would have looked like when Lucy travelled through? Any illustrations of what she would have seen in 1819 will enliven our research.
New Pictures: Do you have any modern pictures of the streets, buildings, gardens and views that would enable us to see the changes that two centuries have wrought?