Explore The Coast
Beaches
The long curve of Sinclair’s Bay has two glorious beaches and Freswick Beach lies a little further North, all with breezes straight from Norway!
Reiss Beach is gently accessible for people needing a little help when walking; it has a sloping path with a handrail, and the path along the dunes gives great views of Castle Sinclair and Noss Head. The beach itself starts with rocks but opens onto sand.
Reiss beach public car park ///unsigned.pencil.case
Keiss Beach is a couple of miles of open sand. Look out for the Caithness at War signs and the WW2 concrete defences installed to prevent landing crafts sweeping straight into Caithness.
Keiss beach car park ///skillet.superbly.damp
Freswick Beach is tucked away, with stunning view of the privately-owned Freswick Castle. The road to it can suffer from potholes.
Park at the top of the lane and walk down ///snuggled.restriction.prepares
All our beaches can suffer from riptides, so please be careful if your dog is a swimmer.
Castles
Caithness is a Coastline of Castles, built on high cliff-tops and promontories sticking into the sea.
Ruined Castle Sinclair Girnigoe is one of North Scotland’s most spectacular sights, full of ghosts and stories, when brother turned on brother and father turned on son. A must-see stop-off for visitors to Wick.
Park in Noss Head car park for a level walk to the castle.
The ruined Castle of Old Wick stands austerely on a promontory to the south of Wick, a couple of miles level walk from the town, or you can park in the castle car park.
Other castles are best viewed from a distance. Some are privately owned, like Keiss, Freswick and Ackergill. But others, like Bucholie Castle to the north of Keiss, or Gunns and Forse near Lybster, were built on sites that made them easy to defend and which are still dangerous to get to today. Which is why they were built there, after all!
But they all remind us of times when danger came from the sea, and Wick was a lot less welcoming to visitors!
Climbing on the castles and cliffs is strictly prohibited due to the risk of injury, risk of damage to these ancient and fragile structures.
Lighthouses
Everybody loves a lighthouse, and Wick’s largest lighthouse was designed by Alan Stevenson, and built on the cliffs at Noss Head in 1849. Sinclair’s Bay had become a ships’ graveyard for mariners who thought they had reached the open waters of the Pentland Firth, so Noss Head lighthouse saved many lives. Today, the lighthouse is operated remotely, and the buildings are private houses, but if the gates are open, you may be able to walk up to the lighthouse.
In Wick harbour, the South Pier Lighthouse was built in 1897 and a second light was built on a pylon on the North Pier in 1910, as the rear range light to guide boats safely in.
You can walk right up to Lybster Harbour Lighthouse, which was built in 1884 to service the busy herring port there. It is run as part of the Waterlines Visitor Centre.
Harbours
Hover over the harbour to find out more
Wick
Famously, the largest Herring harbour in Scotland in its heyday, Wick Harbour is an essential link in the renewables industry, servicing the off-shore Beatrice windfarm, and being the landing point for turbine blades to be used on-shore. It also welcomes up to 80 visiting boats.
Photo by Alan McGee
Staxigoe
Staxigoe Harbour is named for the sea stack sheltering here. Once an important herring harbour, Staxigoe is a hidden gem, tucked away on the road to Castle Girnigoe and Noss Head.
Photo by David Jury
Keiss
Keiss Harbour stood in for Mullaghmore, Ireland, in Season 4 of The Crown, showing the events leading up to the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten. Independent fishermen still land lobster and crab here, using the cellars under the impressive Keiss Harbour House.
Photo by Maciej Winiarczyk
Ackergill
Ackergill Harbour is home to the first ferro-concrete slipway built in Britain, and the old lifeboat house here was used by the RNLI between 1879 and 1932.
Photo by Henri Towe
Lybster
Lybter Harbour is home to the Waterlines visitor centre – a fun introduction for children to the Herring fishing, and with a welcoming dog-friendly café. It featured in Season 4 of The Crown, standing in for Port Leith in the Falkland Islands.
Photo by Wendy Sutherland