Explore The Town
Welcome to Wick: The Seafaring Capital of Caithness
There is so much more to Wick than meets the eye! Park up, stretch your legs, and find out more.
Wick has two main parking areas. Park by the Harbour, to explore the town’s maritime history, or park in the Riverside car park (tucked behind St Fergus Church) for the town and the Riverside walk.
The Silver Darlings
Wick is wrapped around its harbour, and was once the herring capital of Europe. Every year, 10,000 people came to Wick to catch and process the Silver Darlings, as the huge shoals of herring were called. This flood of people, arriving in a place that was home to only 6,000, shaped the town you see today.
See the people
The Johntson family photographed the people and town of Wick for 112 years; look out for their photographs above the roundabout by the harbour bridge, and you can see many more in the Museum. Their moving portraits share people’s lives when fish were caught and processed by hand, not machine.
Explore the harbour
Today, Wick’s double harbour is key to Scotland’s renewables industry, serving the on-shore and off-shore windfarms. And the waters here are dangerous, so the harbour is home to Wick RNLI, hosting Harbour Day every year to raise funds.
When you visit the harbour, look out for the fog cannon, which usually has a pile of lobster creels nearby. Look for the seven steel gates closing the old salt cellars. The cellars housed the salt which was packed into the barrels with the fish, and Wick’s schoolchildren contributed to the designs of the gates.
The lighthouse on the South Pier is easy to spot but can you spot North Pier lighthouse, standing on pylons on the harbour wall?
In good weather you may see the brown sails of the Isabella Fortuna, in the harbour. She is a Victorian fishing boat rescued by volunteers and housed in the old lifeboat shed in bad weather. It’s well worth walking up the hill to the Pilot House and Seafarer’s memorial.
Wickers are proud of our town
During Gala Week at the end of July, Wickers celebrate the community and the town. And throughout the year volunteers step in to maintain the paths and gardens, create the walking trails, and run the museum.
Pulteneytown
Wick was a boom town, and more than doubled in size in the early 1800s to accommodate the businesses like the coopers (barrel-makers) and iron foundries that supported the fishing industry.
The result was Pulteneytown, designed by the Scottish engineer Thomas Telford, who also built the harbour walls. The Telford Trail through Puleneytown is marked by noticeboards, or you can download the map to follow the 40-minute walk through Scotland’s first planned industrial town.
You can pop into the Old Pulteney distillery as you go past – founded in 1826 and originally serviced from the sea, the distillery has a visitors’ centre and provides tours for the over-18s.
Wander among wildlife
The Riverside car park is set behind the shops of Bridge Street and the High Street, but if you turn the other way, you will find the Riverside walk. It’s a popular, peaceful walk, maintained by the Wick Paths Group, and abundant with wetland and wading birds, and other wildlife. Find out more at the viewing platform, half a mile or so out of town.
Wick and the Second World War
You may think Caithness is remote, but it is where the North Sea meets the Atlantic, so it has been a target for invaders from the Vikings to the Luftwaffe. Follow the Caithness at War trail around the town to see the moving memorial garden, created by the siblings of the children killed there in the first civilian bombing of the Second World War.
Wick today
This website is here to help you get the most of Wick and the surrounding area, with maps, trail guides, tips, and suggestions of things to see and do.
We hope you truly feel Welcome to Wick.
