Groatie Buckies

We were looking for something to do a couple of Sundays ago, so we decided to go to Shell Beach to look for Groatie Buckies. Whaaat?? What is a Groatie Buckie, you ask? The first time we heard that we thought for sure it was some of that Scottish talk – where if you just had subtitles, you would realize you understood every word, but without them it was like playing Mad Gab.


A Groatie Buckie is a tiny seashell. It is about the size of your pinky fingernail and is light pink and white and shiny. They are hard to find. Mostly because they are so small. And because they are not found just anywhere.

But of course, Mike found one without trying. On the same day that we went to Puffin Rock, our friends Dave and Leah took us over to a small beach that looks out at the Dounrey site. You might remember this beach from an early post that included a picture of the sign that says anything on that beach might be contaminated and there were two young people collecting whelks to sell to a restaurant. 

So, we were just walking across this beach when Mike bent down and picked up this tiny and pretty shell. “It’s a Groatie Buckie” Leah said. (we thought she said, “Grody bucket.”) “They’re hard to find” Leah said. “I can’t believe you found one” Leah said. But those of you who know Mike know that those kinds of things happen when he’s around.  He's 'that guy.'

Mike has always been ‘that guy.’ He’s ‘that guy’ at Euchre. He wins. Almost all the time. But, in his defense, he also bids on hands most of us wouldn’t. So when in doubt, the mantra becomes, “what would Mike do with this hand?”  

And he’s ‘that guy’ at fishing. When we were newly married, we lived in Idaho Falls. The Land of Fishing and Hunting. And Mike was all over that. Sometimes Mike would go fishing with others. He would put something on the hook, and soon he was getting one bite after another. Another guy on the boat would say, “what are you using for bait?” and Mike would just give him whatever he was using. But, weirdly enough, the other guy would not catch anything with that bait. Instead, Mike would put on a fresh bait of something else – a different lure, maybe – and bam! He’d be getting bites.

And Mike is ‘that guy’ when it comes to knowing things. He is not always right, but he almost always is. And when he is not exactly right, he is close. And he is never in doubt. He and I play word games sometimes (and just let me say, that I am the one of us who is better at language. And spelling. And punctuation.) So, with that in mind, I would like to tell you that more than once we have been playing something like Scrabble where he put out a word that is Not. Quite. Right. So, I get to challenge it. Because I know how it’s spelled. And he’s almost - but Not. Quite. Right. 😊 (yeah, there is a little inner joy in that – mostly because it happens so infrequently)  So you know that when you challenge someone at Scrabble, you have to look up the word and prove the spelling. So I will just tell you now that ‘rattan’ can be spelled ‘ratan.’ You know, as in rattan furniture. So, he was not exactly right – but he also was not wrong. Sigh.

find the Groatie Buckie

 So, if Mike can find Groatie Buckies that easily, how hard can it really be?

So after that day, it became my desire to collect some of these beautiful little shells. My friend Leah has a small collection of them in a little jar in her house and that inspired me to find my own. So, with this in mind, we set off for Shell Beach, which is by John O’Groats – because we are told that is a great place to find them. I had a vision of finding a handful of them.

When we got there, we did not really know where to go, so we asked the girls at the ice cream shop where Shell Beach was. Interestingly, they did not know either. Seems like that should be part of their training. They are dealing with tourists every day who probably ask those kinds of questions all the time. Don’t you think they should know the answers to that sort of question? Surely we were not the first to ask it. The short story here is that we headed out to a beach and combed it for an hour. It might have been Shell Beach. It might not have been. We really did not know. We found 3 shells. We did not think it was. So, back we went to the ice cream shop to make us feel better about all that effort.

(Later we learned that was not Shell Beach. Shell Beach is actually the beach on the other side of John O'Groats from where we were. Information for the next time we want to spend an hour looking for tiny shells)

But as long as we were there, we thought we might as well go up to the lighthouse just up the road. This happened to be Duncansby Head and we saw that there was an adventure to be had. Mike had learned that this is the point where the North Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea.  And the water sort of flows here like a river, instead of the regular back and forth of the ocean waves. We could actually see the flow of the water and where they mixed. Pretty cool.

The Stacks at Duncansby are also here. So, off we went across the field, past grazing sheep, past two great ravines where the sounds of the birds bounced off the rock walls and up through the top. It was such a delight to be walking across this open field with the little white flowers that looked like little tufts of cotton bobbing in the breeze.

Then we found the stacks. Wow. Cool. Amazing. And just about this time, the sun started to break through the clouds and the sky got blue and it warmed up several degrees and we just sat on the grass and relished it. We sat there for a long time watching the handful of seals below and marveling at the stacks and enjoying the warmth and peacefulness of the place.

Northern Scotland has such a rugged beauty, much like the Oregon coast.




And yep. It was windy.