Things to do in Caithness

The Cliffs of Hoy on the west coast of the island of Hoy in Orkney are the highest vertical sea cliffs in Britain, the St John's Head section rising approximately 335 metres from the Atlantic Ocean in a sheer sandstone face of extraordinary scale. The cliffs are visible from the Scrabster to Stromness ferry crossing the Pentland Firth, their profile providing one of the most dramatic natural views available from any scheduled ferry service in Scotland, and are accessible on foot from the Rackwick valley across the interior of the island. The Old Man of Hoy, the most famous sea stack in Britain, stands at the southern end of the cliff section, a column of red Torridonian sandstone approximately 137 metres high that has become one of the most iconic images of the Scottish coast and one of the most challenging and most sought-after rock climbs in Britain. The first ascent of the Old Man of Hoy was made in 1966 and a live television broadcast of the ascent in 1967 introduced the stack to a national audience as one of the defining images of British climbing culture. The walk to the Old Man of Hoy from the Rackwick valley, passing through moorland of the characteristic Hoy character with its heather, bog and dramatic topography quite unlike the rest of Orkney, takes approximately two hours and provides an increasingly impressive series of views of the stack and the cliff coastline as the approach develops.

Duncansby Head is the most northeasterly point of the British mainland, a dramatic headland of red sandstone just east of John o'Groats in Caithness whose combination of the massive sea stack scenery of the Duncansby Stacks, the puffin colony on the cliff face and the extraordinary views across the Pentland Firth to Orkney make it substantially more dramatic and more rewarding than the more famous John o'Groats immediately to the west. The two great stacks of Duncansby, rising 60 metres from the sea in isolated pinnacles of Devonian sandstone, are among the most impressive sea stacks on the Scottish mainland coast. The walk from the lighthouse at Duncansby Head south along the cliff to the viewpoint above the stacks takes approximately twenty minutes and provides progressively more dramatic views of the stacks as the path approaches the most impressive vantage point. At the height of the summer breeding season the puffins that nest in burrows on the cliff face between the stacks and the lighthouse provide one of the most accessible puffin watching opportunities on the north Scottish coast, the birds coming and going from their burrows at close range throughout the day. The Pentland Firth visible across the water from Duncansby Head is one of the most powerful tidal races in the world, the enormous volume of water flowing through the strait between the Scottish mainland and Orkney creating tidal streams of considerable force. The view of this great tidal strait, with Orkney visible clearly on the far side, provides the most direct appreciation of the geography of this extreme corner of Britain.

Dunrobin Castle near Golspie in Sutherland is the largest house in the Scottish Highlands, a fairytale castle of towers and turrets rising from its cliff-top position above the Dornoch Firth in a composition that combines the original medieval tower house with the nineteenth-century additions of Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament, into one of the most visually striking architectural compositions in the Highlands. The castle is the ancestral seat of the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland and the combination of the extraordinary architecture, the lavish interior and the formal French-style garden creates a visitor experience quite unlike any other Highland castle. The interior of Dunrobin contains a remarkable collection of paintings, furniture and objects accumulated over five centuries of ducal occupation, the state rooms providing a comprehensive picture of the ambitions and tastes of one of the most powerful and most controversial aristocratic families in Scottish history. The Sutherland family was responsible for the Highland Clearances in Sutherland, the forced removal of thousands of crofting families from the inland glens to coastal settlements in the early nineteenth century in one of the most brutal episodes in Scottish social history. The formal garden below the castle, designed in the French style with precise geometric parterres visible from the castle windows and the cliff walk above, is one of the finest formal gardens in the Highlands and provides an elaborate planted contrast to the wild Highland landscape visible beyond its walls.

The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in Orkney is one of the most moving and most extraordinary small buildings in Britain, a chapel created by Italian prisoners of war interned on the island during the Second World War who transformed two Nissen huts using only the materials available to them into a devotional building of extraordinary beauty and artistic ambition. The chapel was created under the direction of Domenico Chiocchetti, an artist from Moena in the Italian Dolomines, whose skill and the devotion of the prisoner community produced one of the most remarkable acts of creative faith under adversity recorded in any conflict. The exterior of the chapel retains the outline of the original Nissen hut structure, to which a concrete facade in the form of a small Italian Romanesque church was added, the painted stonework trompe l'oeil columns and pilasters creating an illusion of solid masonry in a building that is essentially two corrugated iron tunnels. The interior, however, creates a completely successful illusion of an elaborate Italian devotional chapel, the painted walls and ceiling simulating brick vaulting, the painted window frames with their stained glass effects and the elaborate decorative programme of the altar area combining to create a space of genuine emotional power. The chapel remains in use for occasional services and is maintained by the Italian Chapel Preservation Committee, and the visit to this remote Orkney island to see what love, faith and artistic skill can achieve in the most constrained of circumstances provides one of the most genuinely moving heritage experiences in Scotland.

John O'Groats occupies a unique place in the British imagination as the northeastern terminus of the most famous end-to-end journey across Britain, the 1,407-kilometre route from Land's End in Cornwall to this remote corner of the Caithness coast in the far north of Scotland. The name alone has come to signify both geographical extremity and personal endurance, and thousands of charity walkers, cyclists, runners and even wheelchair users complete the journey each year, drawn by the particular satisfaction of traversing an entire island from tip to tip. The settlement itself, it must be said, is smaller and simpler than the mythology might suggest. A cluster of buildings around a small harbour, the famous signpost, a hotel, some craft shops and a visitor centre: John O'Groats is a destination that rewards for what it represents rather than what it contains. The signpost pointing to distant cities and the mileage to Land's End is the mandatory photograph for those completing the journey, and the sense of accomplishment felt by those who have walked, cycled or driven the full length of Britain to reach this point is visible and genuine. The landscape surrounding the settlement is what gives the location its real character. The coast here is wild and dramatic, with grey cliffs, grey sea and the constant presence of wind that shapes everything from the stunted vegetation to the stone walls of the farms inland. The Pentland Firth between the mainland and Orkney is one of the most dangerous stretches of water in Britain, with racing tidal currents and standing waves that can challenge even experienced sailors. On clear days the Orkney Islands are plainly visible across the firth, close enough to seem reachable but surrounded by waters that demand respect. The nearby village of Duncansby, two kilometres east, provides access to Duncansby Head, the true northeastern tip of mainland Britain and, many would argue, a more dramatically beautiful destination than John O'Groats itself. The lighthouse here overlooks sea stacks, natural arches and spectacular cliff scenery that constitutes some of the finest coastal walking in the far north. The Duncansby Stacks, particularly, are among the most photogenic geological features in Scotland. Regular ferry services to Orkney depart from nearby Gills Bay and from the ferry terminal at the town of Thurso, making John O'Groats an excellent staging post for the short crossing to explore the remarkable prehistoric and Norse heritage of the Orkney Islands.

Maeshowe in the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site is one of the finest Neolithic chambered cairns in Europe, a passage tomb of approximately 2800 BC whose combination of the extraordinary precision of the drystone masonry, the winter solstice alignment illuminating the chamber at the shortest days of the year and the remarkable twelfth-century Viking runic inscriptions carved into the walls creates a monument of quite exceptional layered historical significance. Historic Environment Scotland manages the site and guided tours are required. The quality of the masonry at Maeshowe surpasses that of any other Neolithic monument in Britain, the large flat stones fitted with precision to create walls and a corbelled roof of remarkable structural elegance. The monument was built approximately 500 years before Stonehenge and the engineering knowledge required to align the passage with the winter solstice sunset demonstrates the mathematical abilities of Orkney's Neolithic builders with unusual clarity. The Viking runic inscriptions, carved by Norse explorers who broke into the tomb in the twelfth century, include some of the longest runic inscriptions in existence written in colloquial Norse. They range from boasts about treasure to descriptions of a woman recorded as the most beautiful in Orkney.

The Ring of Brodgar on the Mainland of Orkney is one of the largest and most impressive Neolithic stone circles in Britain, a ring of originally sixty standing stones set within a circular ditch cut from the bedrock approximately five thousand years ago on an isthmus between the Lochs of Stenness and Harray. Twenty-seven stones survive standing in a circle of over 100 metres diameter, their weathered flagstone pillars rising to varying heights from the closely mown grass of the archaeological site in a landscape of extraordinary quality and resonance. The Ring of Brodgar forms part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside Skara Brae, Maeshowe chambered cairn and the Stones of Stenness. The monument was built in a position of considerable visual power, the isthmus between the two lochs framing the circle on either side with water and the wide Orkney landscape opening in every direction beyond. The choice of this specific location, neither the highest ground nor the most sheltered, implies that the relationship between the stone circle and the water on either side was deliberate and meaningful, the lochs perhaps representing boundaries between different conceptual domains in the cosmology of the builders. The deep ditch surrounding the circle, cut into the bedrock with antler picks, would have created an even more powerful sense of boundary and enclosure in its original form. The standing stones of the Ring of Brodgar are formed from the local Old Red Sandstone, which splits naturally into the flat-faced slabs that the Neolithic builders exploited for their monument stones throughout Orkney. Each stone has a distinctive shape and many bear later carvings by Viking settlers who added runic inscriptions and other marks to monuments already two thousand years old when they arrived.

Skara Brae on the west coast of Mainland Orkney is the finest Neolithic village surviving in western Europe and one of the most remarkable prehistoric sites in the world, a settlement of eight stone-built houses connected by covered passages and preserved in extraordinary completeness by the sand dune that covered and protected it for five thousand years until a storm in 1850 exposed the site to the modern world. The houses, their stone furniture, hearths and fittings still largely intact, provide a uniquely direct and intimate insight into daily life in a Neolithic farming community of approximately 3100 to 2500 BC. The stone furniture of Skara Brae is the feature that most immediately distinguishes it from other prehistoric sites. Because the settlers had no timber available for furniture on the treeless Orkney landscape, they built their beds, shelves, dressers and hearths from the same flat flagstone that provided their building material, and this stone construction has preserved household arrangements that would normally have long since decayed. The dresser of the largest house, a stone cabinet of two shelves facing the entrance, is one of the most vivid surviving objects from prehistoric domestic life anywhere in Europe. The site lies at the edge of the Bay of Skaill, the beach immediately adjacent, and the proximity of the Neolithic village to the sea it would have overlooked five thousand years ago gives the site a quality of temporal compression. The stone walls of the houses, their interiors visible from the viewing path above, feel inhabited rather than abandoned, the permanence of the stone construction creating a sense of presence that the decayed remains of similar settlements elsewhere rarely achieve. Skara Brae is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, which also includes the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness and Maeshowe chambered cairn.