Caithness
Tracking the rise and fall of the herring industry, this great town museum displays everything from fishing equipment to complete herring boats. It’s…
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Caithness
Once you pass Helmsdale, you are entering Caithness, a place of jagged gorse-and-grass-topped cliffs hiding tiny fishing harbours. Scotland's top corner was once Viking territory, historically more connected to Orkney and Shetland than the rest of the mainland. It’s a mystical, ancient land dotted with old monuments and peopled by folk who are proud of their Norse heritage.
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Must-see attractions
Caithness
Dating from between 4000 BC and 2500 BC, these burial chambers are hidden in long, low mounds rising from an evocatively lonely moor. The Long Cairn…
Caithness
Eight miles east of Thurso a minor road leads to dramatic Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on the British mainland. There are majestic cliffs…
Caithness
The Castle of Mey, a big crowd-puller for its Queen Mother connections, is 6 miles west of John O’Groats. The exterior is grand but inside it feels…
Caithness
At Ulbster, 5 miles north of Lybster, this staircase cut into the cliff provides access to a tiny natural harbour, with an ideal grassy picnic spot,…
Caithness
Just west of the Dunnet headland, the sweeping curve of Dunnet Bay offers one of Scotland’s finest beaches, backed by high dunes and a campsite. Rangers…
Caithness
Though it can no longer claim to be the most northerly whisky distillery on mainland Scotland (that goes to the upstart Wolfburn in Thurso), friendly…
Caithness
This museum, just over a mile north of Dunbeath, recreates crofting life from the mid-1800s to WWII. It's in an 18th-century Caithness longhouse with a…
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