John o' Groats is a village in the Highland council area of Scotland. Part of the county of Caithness, John o' Groats is popular with tourists because it is generally regarded as the most northerly settlement on the island of Great Britain, although this is not a claim made by its inhabitants and is in fact false. It is however one end of the longest distance between two inhabited points on the island of Great Britain, Land's End being the other. (The most northerly point on the island of Great Britain is nearby Dunnet Head).
The town takes its name from Jan de Groote, a Dutchman who obtained a grant for the ferry from the Scottish mainland to Orkney, recently acquired from Norway, from James IV, King of Scots, in 1496. The lower case and apostrophe in "John o' Groats" are regarded by many as correct, as the "o'" means "of" and thus is not cognate with Irish names that begin with O', even though that usage also denoted "of"; but the name can be found with the capital and/or without the apostrophe. People from John o' Groats are known as "Groatsers". Local legend has the name John o' Groats termed to reflect the Dutch ferryman's charge of one groat payment for the journey to the islands.
John O' Groats is 876 miles (1,410 km) from Land's End, 690 miles (1,110 km) from London, 6 miles (9.7 km) miles from the Orkney Isles, 12,850 miles (20,680 km) from New Zealand 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.
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