Edderton

Ancient Stone and Firthside Landscape

The Clach Chairidh stands in a field at Edderton, a pointed slab of stone roughly three metres tall. It was probably raised some time between 4000 and 1500 BC, then carved again around AD 500 to 700, when Pictish hands added a leaping salmon, a double disc and a Z-rod to the far older monument. Its pointed top gives it a second name, Clach Biorach, the Pointed Stone. Local tradition holds that it marks the grave of Carius, a Danish prince killed fighting the Picts, though that is a story people tell rather than a settled fact.

The village itself is scattered rather than clustered, spread along the southern shore of the Dornoch Firth five miles west of Tain, its footprint taking in Aultnamain, Dounie and Ferry Point. The railway runs between the houses and the water. The Far North Line still passes through, though Edderton's own station closed in 1960. Behind the village the Struie Ridge climbs to 331 metres at the mast on Struie Hill and 373 metres at The Struie farther southwest.

High Walks and Balblair Whisky

The best of the walking starts at Rheguile, where a four-mile there-and-back climbs Struie Hill: about two to two and a half hours over tarred track that gives way to hill track and, in wet weather, a path that Walkhighlands describes plainly. "The climb to its summit may be muddy at times, but it rewards with spectacular views over the firth." From the ridge you look down over the Dornoch Firth, Balblair Distillery, the A9 crossing and, on a clear day, the lighthouse at Tarbat Ness. There is no public transport to the start; arrive by road and park with care. Closer in, Balblair Community Wood and a handful of short core paths through burn glen and farm country give you gentler ground when the hill is too much.

Whisky has been made here since John Ross set up Balblair in 1790. The railway pulled the distillery half a mile to its present site in 1895, taking coal and barley from the line. Production stopped in 1911, the Norwegian Army occupied the buildings during the Second World War, and whisky returned in 1948 under Robert James Cumming, known as Bertie. Small groups can visit the working buildings, meet the makers and take a tasting; July and August are the maintenance months the distillery calls its Silent Season, though tours continue through them. Balblair also had a brief turn on screen, appearing in Ken Loach's The Angels' Share.

Two Churches above the Water

Two churches sit above the water. The older, the Old Parish Church, was built in 1743 on ground used for worship long before that, a long, low harled building with a bellcote, a ruined burial enclosure dated 1637 and a panelled pulpit from 1794. In its churchyard stands the Edderton Cross Slab, more than six feet of stone carved with a Celtic-style cross and three horsemen, with fragments of other Pictish stones kept inside. Rarer still is a portable nineteenth-century preaching ark that raised the minister about a metre off the ground and could be taken apart for open-air services after the Free Church broke away in 1843. The newer Parish Church, from 1842, is the more emphatic of the two: a Gothic front with a projecting tower, octagonal upper stages and a slated spire, and inside a five-sided gallery carried on fluted cast-iron columns.

Tain, Transport and Dornoch

Day-to-day shopping means a trip to Tain, five miles east, which has its own station on the Far North Line, a car park and a museum with the Clan Ross Centre. The A836 runs through Edderton between Tain and Ardgay, and the Rapsons service 4 stops at the bus shelter on weekdays, working between Tain, Ardgay, Bonar Bridge and Lairg. Across the firth, Dornoch repays the trip for its thirteenth-century cathedral, its old town jail and the former Bishop's Palace.

Community Life and Winter Cover

The community hall, two rooms and a stage in the larger of them, keeps an events calendar for the people who live here. And each winter someone comes to cover the cross slab against the weather, leaving it under wraps in its churchyard until the spring.