Dingwall

Platform Pubs and High Street Food

The Mallard backs straight onto the railway platform, with the trains for Wick and Kyle of Lochalsh passing right by the outdoor tables. Inside there are seven sports screens, a pool table and live music on some nights, and it is particularly busy on Ross County match days. Regulars mention haggis, neeps and tatties, haggis fritters, steak-and-ale pie, macaroni cheese and a cheesecake that changes week to week; dogs are welcome. Up on the High Street, the National Hotel is a family-run bar and restaurant doing British and Scottish cooking that will look after vegetarians and coeliacs.

Dingwall feeds itself well for a town this size. Fraser Brothers has been butchering at 1 High Street since 1888 and has the trophies to prove it: Scottish Black Pudding Champion in 2010, North of Scotland Haggis Champion, North of Scotland Beef Sausage Champion. The counter runs to black and white pudding, haggis, sausages and pies. Deas Bakery, a little further along, sells chicken pies, sausage rolls, meat pies and doughnuts. The Courtyard bakes its own cakes and brownies and lays on afternoon teas, and Cafe India on Tulloch Street covers chicken mirchi masala, spicy lamb biryani, pakora and, for the undecided, curry-topped pizza. Once a month around twenty stalls set up on the pedestrianised High Street for the farmers' market.

The Burgh and the Leaning Tower

The street itself is the old burgh: one long High Street with narrow closes, or vennels, running off it. Dingwall became a royal burgh in 1226 under Alexander II, though the town is older than that. Its name comes from the Old Norse Þingvöllr, "assembly field" — this was a Norse law court, linked to Earl Thorfinn in the eleventh century, and archaeologists digging in 2011–12 found the assembly complex under and adjacent to a town-centre car park.

The old Thing mound later carried an obelisk to the first Earl of Cromartie. An earthquake in 1816 knocked it off true, and for a century it stood as Dingwall's Leaning Tower before being taken down in 1917 and rebuilt in 1923.

St Clement's and the Pictish Stone

St Clement's Parish Church stands apart in its churchyard, built by George Burn between 1799 and 1803, with an octagonal tower and spire and a Jacobean-style pulpit under a sounding board. One architectural account calls it "urbane, but isolated in its churchyard." The ruined St Clement's Aisle beside it dates to 1510. Opposite the gate stands a Pictish symbol stone carved with a double disc and Z-rod, crescents, circles and six cup marks; it spent years built into the church as a plain lintel before anyone recognised it in 1880.

Fort, Canal and Firth Walks

For a walk, the Peffery Way climbs to the vitrified fort on Knockfarrel, roughly three thousand years old, with the Cromarty Firth and Ben Wyvis laid out below, then drops back along an old railway track bed — about six and three-quarter miles in all. A gentler loop follows the former canal, cut by Thomas Telford and finished in 1819, out to the Conon shore, where otter, heron, curlew and the occasional fishing osprey may be seen along the tidal flats.

Rail Junction and Burgh Museum

The station sits in the middle of town with a small free car park, and the line splits here: one branch to Kyle of Lochalsh, one north towards Wick and Thurso, both running back down to Inverness. In the 1730s Town House, now the museum, volunteers keep the old Burgh Council Chamber arranged as it was left, along with medals, photographs and the freedom casket given to Sir Hector Macdonald, a Dingwall crofter's son who rose from private to general and came home in 1899 to a town that turned out in full.