Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
restaurant - a three-course table d'hôte (£33) is better
value. Daily noon-3pm & 6.30-9.30pm.
Luigi's Castle St T 01862 810893. A modern metro-
politan-styled bistro with modern European dishes like
bream with lemon risotto - but the stress on fresh seasonal
produce means you may also find mussels in a red Thai
broth or crab fishcakes. Mains £10-18. Easter-June, Sept
& Oct lunch daily (11am-2pm) & dinner (6.45-9pm)
Wed-Sun; July & Aug lunch and dinner daily; rest of
year lunch daily, dinner Sat & Sun.
North to Wick
North of Dornoch, the A9 hugs the coast for most of the sixty miles to Wick , the
principal settlement in the far north of the mainland. The most telling landmark in
the stretch is the Sutherland Monument near Golspie, erected to the first duke of
Sutherland, the landowner who oversaw the eviction of thousands of tenants during
the Clearances. That bitter memory haunts the small towns and villages of this stretch,
including Brora , Dunbeath , Lybster and pretty Helmsdale . Nonetheless, many of these
settlements went on to flourish through a thriving fishing trade, none more so than
Wick, once the busiest herring port in Europe.
Golspie and around
Ten miles north of Dornoch the A9 rolls through the red-sandstone town of GOLSPIE .
It's a pleasantly bustling if fairly forgettable place, and for most visitors serves only as a
gateway to good mountain-bike trails or the grandest castle of this coastline.
4
Highland Wildcat Trails
W highlandwildcat.com
One of the best reasons to stop is the Highland Wildcat Trails within the hills west of
Golspie. Named the best mountain-bike rides in the UK by one magazine in 2008,
the black-, red- and blue-graded trails include a huge descent from the summit of
Ben Bhraggie to sea level. All trails are accessed from the end of Fountain Road.
Dunrobin Castle
A9, 1 mile north of Golspie • April, May, Sept & early Oct Mon-Sat 10.30am-4.30pm, Sun noon-4.30pm; June-Aug daily 10.30am-
5.30pm • £10 • T 01408 633177, W dunrobincastle.co.uk
Mountain-biking aside, the reason to stop in Golspie is to tour the largest house in
the Highlands, Dunrobin Castle , north of the centre. Modelled on a Loire chateau by
Sir Charles Barry, the architect behind London's Houses of Parliament, it is the seat of
the Sutherland family, once Europe's biggest landowners with a staggering 1.3 million
acres. They were also the driving force behind the Clearances here - it's worth
remembering that such extravagance was paid for by evicting thousands of crofters.
Only a tenth of the 189 furnished rooms are visited on tours of the interior , as
opulent as you'd expect with their fine furniture, paintings (including works by
Landseer, Allan Ramsay and Sir Joshua Reynolds), tapestries and objets d'art.
Alongside, providing a venue of falconry displays (11.30am & 2pm), the attractive
gardens are pleasant to wander en route to Dunrobin's museum , housed in the former
summerhouse and the repository of the Sutherlands' hunting trophies - heads and
horns on the walls plus displays of everything from elephants' toes to rhinos' tails - and
ethnographic holiday souvenirs from Africa.
The last extravagance is that the castle has its own train station (summer only) on the
Inverness-Wick line; no surprise, considering the duke built the railway.
The Sutherland Monument
Approaching Golspie, you can't miss the monument to the first duke of Sutherland on
the summit of Beinn a'Bhragaidh (Ben Bhraggie). A 30ft-high statue on a 79ft column,
 
 
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