Achavanich Stone Setting

Caithness


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 imagination with their desolate location. Nearby are the remains of a burial cairn, another millennium older.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Caithness attractions

1. Grey Cairns of Camster

4.69 MILES

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…

2. Clan Gunn Heritage Centre & Museum

5.05 MILES

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…

3. Waterlines

5.23 MILES

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…

4. Hill o’ Many Stanes

6.77 MILES

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…

5. Laidhay Croft Museum

6.8 MILES

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…

6. Dunbeath Heritage Centre

7.62 MILES

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…

7. Cairn o’Get

7.64 MILES

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.

8. Whaligoe Steps

8.15 MILES

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,…