Croy

Bakes and village essentials

Pure Bakery Highland makes plant-based bakes in Croy and sells a changing selection from its takeaway shop. Its range includes cookies, brownies, blondies, brookies, cookie pies, rocky roads and biscuit slices, alongside gluten-free vegan bakes. It also supplies the Milk Barn café in the village.

Croy has lost its fuel station, recycling facilities and general shop. The remaining takeaway and café give visitors places to pause, while Nairn and Inverness provide broader shopping. The village sits between those towns on the B9091.

Fields, woods and mapped loops

The setting is farmland sloping gently down from the Moray Firth towards the upper Nairnside farms and the River Nairn in its glen, with native and commercial woods among the fields and old estates. The woods hold red squirrels, pine martens and crested tits; deer and badgers work the farmland. You are not guaranteed any of them, but the habitat is there.

Two mapped walks link Croy with its surroundings. Liz's Loop is 5.4 km with 71 metres of climbing, running from Tornagrain along Croy Road, through the village to the community garden and into Lochandinty Woods before returning to Tornagrain. It is named for a resident, Liz, whose generosity helped the Walking & Wheeling Event. The Croy–Holm Rose loop is shorter at 4.4 km, beginning at the community garden, passing the takeaway and the hall before crossing the B9091 to field paths and a signed trail around Holm Rose House, with a short detour down to the River Nairn. Take the B9091 crossing seriously; the pavements are incomplete and the signposting is patchy.

Church stonework and buried silver

The parish church stands on Liz's Loop. The Category B-listed building is dated 1764 and was repaired in 1829, a plain rectangular Presbyterian building with pointed Y-traceried windows, a birdcage bellcote and a stone ball finial. Inside there is a bowed west gallery, grained timber fittings and 19th-century monuments chiefly to the Roses of Kilravock and the Davidsons of Cantray. The listing also takes in the burial ground and a watch-house from around 1800, with bull's-eye vents. Before the Reformation Croy was a prebend of Elgin Cathedral, dedicated to St Duthac. The former manse, designed in 1855 by William Lawrie, is also listed, with boat-shaped gables, a Moorish gablet and ball finials.

The older history here tends to turn up underfoot. In the spring of 1875 a girl planting potato drills at Mains of Croy found the Croy Hoard: an early-9th-century silver penannular brooch, knitted silver wire, glass and amber beads, part of a bronze balance and a penny of Coenwulf of Mercia. A second group came to light soon after, including a coin of Æthelwulf of Wessex. The objects are in National Museums Scotland now. On the night of 15 April 1746 the Jacobite army passed close to Croy on its failed march to surprise the Government camp near Nairn, the night before Culloden.

Nearby heritage and getting here

The battlefield is about seven miles west, and the Clava Cairns, a Bronze Age cemetery of passage graves, ring cairns and standing stones some 4,000 years old, sit on a terrace above the River Nairn nearby. Cawdor Tavern is a country pub and restaurant serving modern Scottish food. Cawdor Castle has gardens and woodland trails, and its Courtyard Café cooks with estate beef, game and garden produce. Kilravock Castle, a keep licensed in 1460 and enlarged in the 17th century, stands in the same stretch of country.

Getting here, the nearest railhead is Inverness Airport station at Dalcross, step-free and with free parking, though unstaffed and without toilets. Bus 1A calls.

The hall and its memorial

The village hall was built in 1907 with local money and a Carnegie grant, on land given by the Kilravock estate, and it still holds the scouts, the karate class and the rest of the week's meetings. The war memorial beside it went up in 1919 with 27 names from the First World War, and 11 more were added after the Second. They are the names of a small place, gathered on the green at the middle of it.