Imagine your mood. Having started out at the most south-westerly tip of mainland Britain, you've powered 800 gruelling miles up the country, by foot, on pushbike or – infinitely more sensibly: we're not all fitness freaks – in an open-top high-performance sports vehicle. The last stretch, heading north from Inverness, freewheels you along a gymnast's ribbon of road, hill and crag to the left, shimmering sea never leaving your shoulder on the right.
You spot the floating oil rigs being buffed and preened close to the Cromarty Bridge; skate by Royal Dornoch Golf Club, favourite haunt of Tom Watson, five-time Open champion and king of links golf; pass Dunrobin Castle, a ramshackle pile with fastidiously manicured tropical gardens; peer down the 365 suicidally steep stone steps at Whaligoe harbour; and eventually make it to the last staging post, Wick, former herring capital of the universe and still home to some of the finest seafood restaurants in the land.
One final Homeric push to the finishing line, the most north-easterly point, the denouement of your once-in-a-lifetime odyssey. Whereupon you find the solitary cafeteria shut; wind whistling through the haunted shell of a deserted clifftop hotel; and the iconic end-to-end signpost vanished, the photographer whose cash cow it represents having gone home for his supper and taken it with him.
Just imagine your mood.
Such was the fate of the exhausted traveller upon reaching the famous John O'Groats back in the day. A welcome of such anti-climactic absurdity it was small wonder most arrivals didn't summon their remaining scraps of energy and push on into the sea.
In 2010 came the nadir, with a Carbuncle Award for "the most dismal place in Scotland" very publicly foisted on the village by Scottish architectural magazine Urban Realm, which denounced the area's "air of dereliction" and cited the car park near the harbour, witheringly, as its most striking feature. Hats off to the brazen chutzpah of Urban Realm, based in Glasgow, a city pelted down the years by the odd aesthete's brickbat itself. But its point stood nonetheless. And the car park was as good a place as any to start examining the John O'Groats malaise: people regularly drew up to peer briefly over the cliff, before buggering off straight back down the road.
A shocking state of affairs, and nothing short of heartbreaking, given the wild riches on offer in the immediate environs. But pennies drop, and after years of drift and decay, John O'Groats suddenly finds itself in the middle of a game-changing regeneration. The most potent symbol of the village's atrophy, the derelict John O'Groats House hotel of 1875, had been slowly slipping away on the clifftop, but is currently undergoing a £2m renovation with both sustainability and symbolism in mind.
It would have been easy to raze the sodden, unlisted edifice to the ground, especially as one or two more tough winters might well have collapsed its rickety walls anyway. But despite standing empty since the mid-1990s, the hotel remained a powerful icon of the area, still photographing well if snapped at the right angle. Regional development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise decided to strip it back to a shell, let the North Sea breezes dry out the structure, then bring history back to life with a sympathetic refit. The grand old pile will reopen next summer as 17 self-catering flats, some alongside the main building in new multicoloured timber houses, glamming up a previously sullen seafront with shades of Tobermory.
This is part of a larger investment by the Natural Retreats group, which in August unveiled several stylish chalets set unobtrusively in nearby fields, with a gorgeous widescreen view of the Pentland Firth and the bleak beauty of uninhabited Stroma, two miles away across the sea.
The company also recently opened Storehouse, a seafront cafe, bar and restaurant: chef Leslie Campbell's hearty take on Cullen skink, the milky fish soup which has surely replaced your haggises and porridges as Scotland's signature dish, is as good as you'll find outside the eponymous Moray seaside town. (Campbell's trick? Sautéed leeks.) Meanwhile, the artisan Highland ales on offer pack a malty punch, albeit a far lighter one than the holy clattering delivered by Old Pulteney, the dangerously moreish local single malt.
Desperately required their investment may be, but the region's new suitors are at pains to stress they have no desire to monopolise the entire village and turn it into a craggy take on Center Parcs. Their third new concern, the Outfitters store, is a case in point. Visitors can browse an array of fine merchandise or book activities – the star turn is an exhilarating rollercoaster ride on the company's new rigid inflatable boat over razorblade waves around Stroma to spot seals, puffins and, if your luck's in, killer whales – and buy or rent gear for walking, cycling or surfing their way along the sea's edge.
The region's remoteness ensures plenty of unspoilt coast, from the tranquil sands of Dunnet beach – an increasingly popular destination for informed surfers tired of Cornwall, near Britain's most northerly point at Dunnet Head – to the towering rock stacks of Duncansby Head, where the Pentland Firth meets the North Sea in a rolling boil of angry waters.
What the Outfitters signally doesn't do is queer the pitch of the shop next door on the harbour, the First & Last. A long-standing tourist attraction, it's a tardis of tat, but in the best sense: an old-school emporium exuding an indefinable visitor-centre charm, offering a range of postcards, locally branded trinkets, bonny sweaters, sugary sweeties, CDs of accordion legend Jimmy Shand, and even a few old audio cassettes of traditional Scottish music. Modern development is all good and well, but no Scottish tourist attraction is complete without a wee bit of heedrum-hodrum.
Similarly, the reopened hotel will not boast a bar. For late-night bevvies, the determined dipso will still be required to meander a few hundred honest yards up the road to the modest but welcoming Seaview Hotel, where tired and emotional end-to-enders mix with the regular clientele, each going about their business quietly and efficiently: the former toasting their achievement by snorkelling pints, the latter viewing the celebrations while sipping sensibly at halves (which are refilled at twice the rate).
The early signs are that the old, established attractions in the area will be energised by the shock of the new, the two worlds eager to interact: welcomes were extended by the friendly golfers (reminder: Scotland is not England) at the rugged links of Reiss; the chef at the Bord de L'eau restaurant in Wick, with his preposterously light and boozy crêpes suzette; the guides at the Queen Mother's holiday home in Mey, the 1950s trapped in amber, a project with a quaint allure capable of beguiling even trenchant republicans.
Should, as looks likely, the project succeed in attracting more visitors to this bewitching corner of the country – and keep them there – a second phase of development is tentatively planned for John O'Groats, with the possible renovation of a mainly deserted craft centre. And after that? Well, seeing we're on the subject of carbuncles with car parks, does anybody fancy doing something about Land's End?
• Accommodation was provided by Natural Retreats (0844 384 3166, naturalretreats.co.uk), which is offering three-night stays from £249 for up to six guests (a discount of 35%) and seven-night stays from £499 (a 45% discount) on bookings made by 30 September 2012
