East coast
-> Scotland
-> Highland region
-> East coast
The east coast of the Highlands, between Inverness and Wick, is nowhere near as spectacular as the west, with gently undulating moors, grassland and low cliffs where you might otherwise expect to find sea lochs and mountains. Washed by the cold waters of the North Sea, it's markedly cooler, too, although less prone to spells of permadrizzle and midges. Although the Inverness-Thurso train line is twice forced by topography to head inland, the region's main transport artery, the A9 road - slower here than in the south - follows the coast, which veers sharply northeast exactly parallel with the Great Glen and formed by the same geological fault.
While many visitors bypass this region in a headlong rush to the Orkneys, those who choose to dally will find prehistoric and historic sites that are equally impressive. The area around the Black Isle and the Tain Peninsula was a Pictish heartland, and has yielded many important finds. Further north, from around the ninth century AD onwards, the Norse influence was more keenly felt than in any other part of mainland Britain, and dozens of Scandinavian-sounding names recall the era when this was a Viking kingdom. The whole area is studded with prehistoric brochs, cairns and standing stones, many in remarkable condition.
Culturally and scenically, much of the east coast is more lowland than highland, and Caithness in particular evolved more or less separately from the Highlands, avoiding the bloody tribal feuds that wrought such havoc further south and west. Later, however, the nineteenth-century Clearances hit the region hard, as countless ruined cottages and empty glens show. Hundreds of thousands of crofters were evicted and forced to emigrate to New Zealand, Canada and Australia, or else take up fishing in one of the numerous herring ports established on the coast. The oil boom has brought a transient prosperity to one or two places over the past two decades, but this has been countered by the downturn in the North Sea fishing industry, and the area remains one of the country's poorest, reliant on sheep farming, fishing and tourism.
The one stretch of the east coast that's always been relatively rich is the Black Isle just over the Kessock Bridge heading north out of Inverness, whose main village, Cromarty, is the region's undisputed highlight, with a crop of elegant mansions and appealing fishermen's cottages clustered near the entrance to the Cromarty Firth. In late medieval times, pilgrims including James IV of Scotland poured through here en route to the red-sandstone town of Tain to worship at the shrine of St Duthus, where the former sacred enclave has now been converted into one of the many "heritage centres" that punctuate the route north. Beyond Dornoch, a famous golfing resort recently famous as the site of Madonna's wedding, the ersatz-Loire château Dunrobin Castle is the main tourist attraction, a monument as much to the iniquities of the Clearances as to the eccentricity of Victorian taste. The award-winning Timespan Heritage Centre further north at Helmsdale recounts the human cost of the landlords' greed, while the area around the port of Lybster is littered with the remains of more ancient civilizations. Wick, the largest town on this section of coast, has an interesting past inevitably entwined with the fishing industry, whose story is told in another good heritage centre, but is otherwise uninspiring. The relatively flat landscapes of this northeast corner -windswept peat bog and farmland dotted with lochans and grey and white crofts - are a surprising contrast to the more rugged country south and west of here.
Copyright Rough Guides Ltd as trustees for its authors. Published by Rough Guides. All rights reserved. The Rough Guides name is a trademark of Rough Guides Ltd. |
back