Day 53: Fortrose to Dalmore Distillery, Highland

Virtual Walk: Scotland 2021

26th February 2021: 90.70km walked today taking the total to 5507.20/8868km. 11% of 112 entries submitting 824.52km.

From Fortrose we walk the Black Isle coastline before visiting Dingwall en route to Invergordon. Grab a cuppa, put your feet up and enjoy the ‘walk’.

Route 17: Inverness to Scrabster NC500+ Part 1

We meander down to Fortrose Harbour where steamers once came into port from Inverness, docking at a larger pier that stood here until 1898, a victim of progress, when the steamers no longer called due to the arrival of the railways.

Fortrose, along with Rosemarkie (just along the road), made up the Royal Burgh of Fortrose and Rosemarkie. Its Gaelic name is ‘A’Chananaich’, meaning the Chanonry. As we wander through the town, we come to its 13th-century red sandstone cathedral ruins located in a quiet square surrounded by trees. It was abandoned after the Scottish Reformation and was used as a church by the local people until it started to deteriorate in the late 1500s, after which only burials continued in the graveyard. Its state worsened when in the 1650s Oliver Cromwell sourced materials from the structure, as well as other places (Beauly Priory included), to build a citadel in Inverness. Clan chiefs are buried in the cathedral ruins, now maintained by Historic Environment Scotland.

We head through the Fortrose streets to make our way to the point of Chanonry Ness, the peninsula which juts out into the Moray Firth. The peninsula is mostly a golf course, part of the Scottish Links Fortrose and Rosemarkie Golf Course, with breathtaking views out over the Firth. While we walk, I’ll tell you about a legend associated with this area, regarding the Brahan Seer, whose memorial we’ll pass en route.

Kenneth Mackenzie, Coinneach Odhar, or ’Dark Kenneth’, is said to have been a seer who lived in the 1600s. He is said to have been murdered, burnt in a spiked tar barrel on Chanonry Point. He had predicted the unfaithful behaviour of the current clan chief, Kenneth MacKenzie, which brought about his fate. There is no historical evidence that the Brahan Seer existed; he is thought to be the creation of 19th-century folklorist Alexander MacKenzie, but there is still a memorial cairn to his ‘death spot’ on Chanonry Point!

Chanonry Lighthouse was lit at the Point in 1846. It occupies a prime position right next to the pebble beach overlooking the Moray Firth and has the best view of Fort George’s imposing walls on the opposite shore. We walk the beach, past the lighthouse to the furthest point on the beach to wait for the dolphins to appear. This is one of the best spots in the UK to see dolphins from the land. The currents here trap fish on the incoming tide, at which point the dolphins feed and play just off the point. We checked the tides and have arrived just in time for the performance! Noses, flippers and acrobatics galore on a good day! The best time of year to see them is when the salmon are returning to the rivers to spawn, usually between November and December.

We continue along the northern edge of the coastline, the golf course still to the landside, until just before we reach Rosemarkie. ‘Ros Mhaircnidh’, in Gaelic, sits on Rosemarkie Bay and is an ancient village dating back to at least Pictish times. Several Pictish stones were discovered in and around the church graveyard which dates to the 8-9th century; they can be viewed in the Groam House Museum on the High Street. A major early monastery was founded here around 600 AD by St Boniface on the site of the current parish church. A cathedral then followed by the order of King David I in 1126 but the site’s importance ended when the cathedral at Fortrose was built in the late 1200s. Reaching the end of the seafront at Mill Road, we turn up the steep hill past the Plough Inn. If you continue along the coast from this point, you will come across 19 sea caves that are still undergoing archaeological investigation. It is believed that the caves could have been in use as far back as prehistoric times when these caves would have sat nearer the shoreline; finds to date are as early as 300 BC, the Iron Age.

Heading out of Rosemarkie on Bridge Street, we leave the road at the top of the hill to walk the Fairy Glen. Fairy Glen is a wooded gorge through which the Markie Burn flows to the sea. It is an easy, well-marked trail running under the broadleaf canopy alongside the burn to reach 2 charming waterfalls. It was once a place where the village children ‘dressed’ the pool next to the spring with flowers, to ensure the fairies kept the water supply clean. The practice of well dressing is an ancient tradition, thought to be of Roman or Celtic origin. As the children did at Fairy Glen, people dressed water wells to thank the gods, or fairies, for a fresh supply of clean water. The tradition has since been adopted by the Christian church to thank God for clean water and is still practised in several areas across the UK. A log lying beside this pool is also embedded with pennies, another ancient Scottish tradition of the’ wishing tree’, where a tree near a holy well was often chosen for offerings. The action of a penny hammered into the wood was a symbol of good luck. In recent years, there has been an increase in its popularity, but the copper pennies actually poison the trees and affect the wildlife that feeds on them, so the practice must be strictly controlled to protect mother nature.

Our route takes us back on to the main road heading for Cromarty, but we walk the 10 kilometres on a more minor road, whose junction is opposite where we re-join the road. This takes us past several settlements, alongside fields and woods, onto another minor road leading us to the Sutors of Cromarty.

We are now at the Sutors of Cromarty, standing on the south Sutor, one of 2 opposing headlands at the opening to the Cromarty Firth and the furthest point on the Black Isle. ‘Sutor’ is Scots for a shoemaker, and the cliffs are so-called after a legend associated with giant shoemakers, who used the cliffs as their work benches and tossed their tools to each other. Both sutors have military remains from both World Wars and we need to tread carefully as we explore, given sheer drops covered by vegetation. There are caves on the cliff face but these are impossible to see unless you take a boat out to view them. Fiddlers Well existed here, now dried up, but was said to cure TB, if you drank from it, then took fresh air and exercised. Local author, Hugh Miller, (more of him later) wrote of the tale in Chapter 13 of his book, ‘Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland’. There is a route down to the shore from the sutor, but it has become overgrown and quite dangerous in recent years. We retrace our steps back to Cromarty Mains Farm, where we take a road down into the village of Cromarty, passing Cromarty House en route. Cromarty Castle stood on this site from the 12-13th century, a motte and bailey castle which was the seat of the Urquharts. It was demolished in 1772 and its materials used to build the house.

Cromarty, another former Royal Burgh from Alexander I’s reign, developed as a seaport due to the fantastic natural harbour created by the sutors. It has a large seafaring history of fishing, ferry connections, industrial import and export, and emigration during the clearances. It was majorly developed by the Cromarty Estate owner in the 1770s, so is known for its eclectic mix of small cottages and substantial Georgian merchant buildings; workers and prosperous owners lived side by side. The town had cloth, rope and ironwork factories, as well as a brewery at that time, and later was an important naval base during both World Wars. Cromarty is one of the sea areas on the British Shipping Forecast, added in 1949 when the sea area map was extended. Cromarty is a sleepy town today, enjoyed by tourists passing through, a great place to spot dolphins and popular with coastal rowers. Ian Rankin even has a writing ‘bolt hole’ here.

We arrive at Miller Street along the shore then follow the road round onto Church Street, an attractive street with the eclectic architectural mix of properties mentioned earlier. As we do so we pass the Old Brewery, founded in 1776. After its closure, the building sat empty for 80 years until the Cromarty Arts Trust acquired the building in 1988 and is now operated as an arts centre.

East Church or ‘Old Church’, one of the best-preserved 18th-century Presbyterian churches in Scotland, lies at the heart of what once was the old town surrounded by a graveyard. There has been a church here since medieval times; James IV stayed at the priest’s house in 1499 on his way to a shrine Tain. Following the Scottish Reformation, it continued on as a Presbyterian church, which saw a few changes internally before it closed in 1998. The Redundant Church Trust bought the building for £1 but damp and decay began to threaten its survival. In 2006, the church was a finalist in the BBC’s ‘Restoration Village’, after which funding followed in 2007 to pay for the essential work required to secure its future. The building reopened to visitors in 2011 and is used for events by the community. We wander the grounds and the interior, still smelling musty from the bad case of damp it once had, and the sense of history is clear.

Further along on the same side of the street, is the only thatched cottage left in Cromarty dating back to 1711: Hugh Miller was born here, and this is Hugh Miller’s Cottage and Museum. Hugh Miller, stonemason, poet, geologist and author, was born in the cottage in 1802. Miller House was built next door in 1797 by his father, a ship’s captain, with the intention of moving his family there. However, before completion, his ship was lost in a storm, so he rented the house out to cover costs. He then died at sea when Hugh was 5 so the family never left the cottage. Hugh did live in the house briefly in 1837 after his marriage and before moving to Edinburgh. Hugh educated himself in natural history and literature, writing poetry, geology and other books after he gave up stonemasonry due to silicosis in 1834. He became conflicted in his strong religious versus scientific views, eventually committing suicide in 1856; there are theories as to why but no one really knows the truth. He collected 6,000 fossils throughout his life, most of which are in the National Museum of Scotland. The museum of his life and work here is run by the National Trust for Scotland.

Next door to the museum is the most imposing building on the street, Cromarty Courthouse. Completed in 1773, at a time when the town was being developed, it was paid for by both George Ross, Cromarty Estate owner, and with Government funds from Jacobite lands seized after the 1745 uprising. The Mercat Cross sits in front of the building, which functioned as a court building before its closure in 1872, then to be used as a police station by the Royal Navy. In 1991 it was restored and is now a community-run museum of local history.

We continue along the street to the next elaborate building, the Hugh Miller Institute. This was gifted to the people of Cromarty by the Carnegie Trust, opened in 1904 by Andrew Carnegie himself as a place of learning and contained a public library; it still provides this function today for the community. We see the Victorian Jubilee Fountain in the front garden of the institute, which initially sat on the junction at the end of Church Street, erected in 1887 to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. No one knows when it was moved or why, but apparently a woman used to hit it with her car!

We walk the remainder of the street past little shops serving tourists and the community alike. At the end of the street, we turn right to walk the Cromarty Links to the harbour and lighthouse and take in the views of the merchants' houses, as well as the Sutors and Nigg across the water. As we walk, we arrive at the Emigrants Stone, carved by sculptor Richard Kindersley, and erected in 2002 to commemorate all local people who made the traumatic passage to ‘new lives’ during the Highland Clearances. Cromarty Harbour saw 38 ships leave for the New World during the 1830s to 1840s, the names of which are inscribed on the stone with a quote from the Inverness Courier, written by Hugh Miller, in 1831:

“The Cleopatra, as she swept past the town of Cromarty, was greeted with three cheers by crowds of the inhabitants and the emigrants returned the salute, but mingled with the dash of the waves and the murmurs of the breeze their faint huzzas seemed rather sounds of wailing and lamentation than of a congratulatory farewell.”

At the end of the Links stands the new Cromarty Community Cinema, which opened its doors in January 2020. Opposite stands the lighthouse, constructed in 1846 and decommissioned in 2006; now used by Aberdeen University Zoology Department for marine research and teaching. In front of the lighthouse is Cromarty Harbour, looking very much like it did when it was built in the 1700s. We walk its old cobbles, imagining it in times past. At the end of the pier, we look over the Firth to Nigg, where they specialise in marine renewables and oil rig refurbishment. Recently a summertime ferry has been reintroduced for tourists, once called the Kings Ferry as James IV used it many times to visit a shrine in Tain. The ferries, which were a big part of port life, declined after 1982 after the new Cromarty Bridge spanning the Cromarty Firth was completed. If we look further up the Firth, we see oil rig platforms, parked following the downturn in the oil industry, awaiting work by either Cromarty Firth Port Authority, at Invergordon, or Nigg Energy Park. It causes a little controversy as the numbers have greatly increased in recent years! There is an austere beauty to them though, despite the fact they are intruders here.

We continue along the Black Isle’s northern shore, leaving Cromarty behind, walking for 10 kilometres along Cromarty Bay through Shorehill and Jemimaville, then following the coast north to visit a charming spot on Udale Bay, the wee St Michael’s Kirk. Restored in recent years through the work of the Kirkmichael Trust, it was a pre- and post-Reformation church which ceased service in 1769 becoming a mausoleum. In 2017, it reopened as a small museum to a collection of ornate gravestones which are of national significance. We take in the lovely views while we wander the graveyard peering at the old gravestones in situ, before continuing our journey to Newhall Point at the end of the Bay. A narrow point between the 2 shores, we have a great view of Invergordon port, a massive cruise liner sitting in the dock, a regular occurrence.

From here we walk the minor B9163 road for 14 kilometres, taking us along coastal fields and through several settlements to cross the A9 just before the Cromarty Bridge. A further 7 kilometres see us pass through Conon Bridge and over the River Conon, a great trout and salmon fishing river, into Maryburgh at the head of the Moray Firth. Both villages grew up around the bridge, constructed by Thomas Telford in 1809 but since replaced to handle heavier traffic after the road became part of the original A9 route. We leave the Black Isle Peninsula and head for Dingwall, in the old county of Easter Ross which covers the area up to the Dornoch Firth.

Dingwall dates to 800 AD and Norse times. It was made a Royal Burgh in 1226 and has remained an important administrative centre for the area throughout the centuries. It has a small museum showing the social and military history for Dingwall and is home to Ross County Football Club. As we walk into the town along Station Road, we pass Dingwall & Strathpeffer Free Church, constructed in 1870 and still in use today. At the same junction with the High Street is the Highland Theological College, part of UHI, and we walk past this on Achany Road to get to Castle Street. In the 11th century, Dingwall Castle stood in this area, on the site of a former fortress where Macbeth was believed to have been born circa 1010. The castle fell into disuse after 1600 and was used as a quarry for other buildings, the remainder levelled in 1817. You can see a doocot across the road, constructed using castle stone in 1825, and a section of the wall remains in a private garden nearby. We take a path alongside the River Peffery which runs through the town. In the early 1800s, a harbour and canal were built on its banks near the sea entrance, designed and overseen by Thomas Telford. There isn’t much left to see of that today, just a few structures in the Firth shore area and the mile-long Dingwall Canal. It proved a good port for trading but with the arrival of the railways, it was no longer in use by the 1880s.

Crossing Tulloch Street Bridge, we see Pefferside Park alongside the river. We are now on Craig Road which becomes the A862 as it heads out of Dingwall. We follow it along the shoreline until we reach a roundabout, where the Cromarty Bridge makes landfall from the Black Isle at Ardullie Point. We now join the A9 heading north.

Looking out for seals that sit on the rocks here at low tide, we walk 2 kilometres to reach a popular rest spot called The Storehouse of Foulis, on Foulis Point. Built in the 1740s as a storehouse or renthouse for the Munro Estate, it was a collection point for tenants rent payment goods. On the Cromarty Firth, it was in a good position for carts to bring the goods in for distribution by boat easily beached here; we can still see the remains of the pier pillars on the shore. The building was used to store goods for the clan into the 20th century before being converted into a restaurant, shop and visitor centre, run by the Munro Clan in 1998. In the car park is a glacial stone, brought from Glen Glass, which commemorates the settling of the first clan chief, Donald O’Caan from Ireland here. Many Munros still live in the area and it is still referred to as Donald’s Land or Ferindonald. The seat of Clan Munro is located at Foulis Castle in nearby Evanton.

We continue along the A9, passing Evanton, and take a left turn just before Alness. We wander up the hills on minor farm roads to reach the Fyrish car park where we pick up the Fyrish Jubilee Path, the best route to use for climbing Cnoc Fyrish (Fyrish Hill). We walk the gentle uphill gravel path through lush pine forest, which descends to cross Contullich Burn before climbing steeply once more to a lochan and the first beautiful views over the Cromarty Firth. We pause for a time before the final steep path to the open heather moorland on top of the hill. Before us stands the Fyrish Monument with spectacular 360-degree views of the Firth and the surrounding hill ranges.

The Fyrish Monument was built on Fyrish Hill in 1782 to represent the Gate of Negapatam in Madras, taken for the British by Sir Hector Munro in 1781. As current clan chief, he ordered its construction to give local men some work, as the Clearances were causing employment issues at that time. We spend time posing for photos in front of the Monument and enjoy the scenery before retracing our steps to just past the lochan where we turn right. A minor track through the forest leads us down a steep hill, back onto the road following the course of the Contullich Burn to the Alness cemetery, where we head into Alness itself.

Alness was certainly here in 1227, an old crofting community that over the centuries expanded, with the arrival of Teaninich Distillery (1817) in the grounds of Teaninich House (former seat of Clan Munro), the influx of the military during the 2 World Wars and the aluminium smelting industry post-war in nearby Invergordon which ended in 1981. The Skirmish of Alness took place in 1715 between Jacobites and pro-government supporters and RAF Alness was based here in World War 2. We pass through the main street, over the River Averon with views over the Teaninich Distillery, past the train station and Alness Football Club ground, leaving the town to cross the A9 and approach Invergordon.

We pass Dalmore Distillery (1839) as we head for the Diamond Jubilee Path which will take us right along the coast here through Invergordon to Saltburn.