Must-see attractions in 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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

Six miles to the northwest of Lybster and a mile off the A9, these 30 standing stones date from around 2000 BC. The crumbling monuments still capture the…

Two miles beyond the Camster turn-off on the A99 is a curious, fan-shaped arrangement of 22 rows of small stones, probably dating to around 2000 BC…

Two miles east of John O'Groats, Duncansby Head has a small lighthouse and 60m-high cliffs sheltering nesting fulmars. A 15-minute walk through a sheep…

Mary-Ann lived in this 19th-century croft, on the headland near the main road, for nigh on a century. In-depth guided tours take you round her humble but…

At the picturesque harbour in Lybster, this museum has a downstairs cafe, and an exhibition on the town's fishing heritage above. There's a smokehouse…

Seven miles northeast of Helmsdale is Badbea, a crofting village established at the time of the Clearances and gradually abandoned in the late-19th and…

A path leads a mile south from town to the ruins of 12th-century Old Wick Castle, with the spectacular cliffs of the Brough and the Brig, as well as Gote…

At the Clan Gunn Heritage Centre and Museum in Latheron, 3 miles northeast of Dunbeath on the A9, there's information on the Gunn clan, from its Viking…

There's something rather fetching about this small-batch distillery on the main road through Dunnet. The very tasty Rock Rose gin and Holy Grass vodka are…

This heritage centre has a stone carved with runic graffiti, and a display on the work of Neil Gunn, whose wonderful novels evoke the Caithness of his…

Three miles northeast of Wick is the magnificently located clifftop ruin of Castle Sinclair. It's a short walk from a car park, with some interpretative…

The Cairn o’Get, a prehistoric burial cairn, is signposted off the road in Ulbster. There's a mile of boggy walking from the car park.