A merry trot: Robert Louis Stevenson's journey on the mail coach from Wick

About this recording

In November 1868, Robert Louis Stevenson travelled by ancient mail coach from Wick to Golspie and gave a vivid account of the experience in a letter to his cousin. The letter is read here by Jeremy Hodges, a member of the Edinburgh-based RLS Club and a former editor of the John O’Groat Journal and Caithness Courier.

Louis was returning home to Edinburgh after his well-documented work experience placement with the family firm of civil engineers building the ill-fated breakwater at Wick harbour. He had just turned 18 and had yet to find fame as an author.

“After weeks of stormy weather, in a town permeated by the smell of herring being gutted on the quayside, he was looking forward to the excitement of the overnight journey in a mode of transport unchanged since the days of the highwaymen a century before,” Jeremy explains in his introduction. “He would write about it all in a long letter to his artist cousin Bob Stevenson.”

Louis tells of travelling through Lybster, Berriedale, the Ord, Helmsdale and Brora before reaching Golspie to catch the southbound train. The railway had opened at Golspie some seven months earlier, in April 1868, but it would be another six years before it would reach Wick.

Louis wrote: “The coach swayed to and fro. The wind battled and roared about us. I observed the difference in sounds – the rhythmic and regular beat of the hoofs as the horses cantered up some incline, and the ringing, merry, irregular clatter as they slung forward, at a merry trot, along the level.”

The RLS Club, founded in 1920, is dedicated to fostering interest in Robert Louis Stevenson and his work worldwide. Jeremy was among a group of members who took part in a three-day visit to Caithness in 2024, visiting places mentioned in Louis’s letters to family members.

In a separate recording for Wick Voices, Jeremy talks about his time as editor of the John O’Groat Journal and Caithness Courier from 1985 to 1988. Originally from Essex, Jeremy now lives in Falkirk.

The photo shows the mail coach leaving Thurso on its last journey in 1874.