The rows of houses in old Embo run in parallel lines down towards the beach. The sand starts here and does not really stop, continuing south past Dornoch and north towards Loch Fleet, backed by what Highland Council rates as one of the finest beach and dune systems in Sutherland. On a clear morning it can feel like you have the whole beach to yourself.
The village's social centre is the Old School Cafe, in the sandstone schoolhouse William Fowler designed in 1859. Lottery money in 2016 turned the building into a community hub without stripping out its character, and it now holds a hall, a meeting room, a community shop and the café itself, which serves coffee, cakes and light lunches. Its profits go towards hospitality training for young people. Twice a week the meeting room becomes a post office counter, run as an outreach service from Dornoch, offering everything except foreign currency.
For a pint and a plate you go to the Coast Bar & Restaurant at Grannie's Heilan' Hame, the Parkdean holiday park on the edge of the village, and the pub-style venue in Embo. There are big-screen televisions inside and outdoor decking for warmer days. The park around it runs a Nisa store, a fish-and-chip takeaway, Joe's American Grill for burgers, ribs and steak, and Scoops for ice cream. The heated indoor pool, spa bath, adventure golf, tennis courts and kids' clubs are also here, though access for cottage guests may depend on a day pass, which is worth checking before you promise the children anything.
In the forecourt at Grannie's sits a chambered cairn, excavated in 1956 and 1960. Its two Neolithic chambers were later reused for Bronze Age burials: at least six adults and nine children lay in the main chamber, one cist held a woman with a food vessel and a jet-bead necklace, another held two babies. The animal bones found alongside them included dog, pig, otter, great auk, duck, guillemot and gannet.
Embo's best-known day came on 16 July 1988. To raise the £3,000 the village needed to turn its closed school into a community centre, members of the local cribbage club declared independence for twenty-four hours. Donald Ward was appointed prime minister; Liz Gill, now Liz Robertson, took Internal Affairs. The new state issued its own currency, the Cuddie, worth 50p and redeemable at the Grannie's pub for a measure of Clynelish, and the distillery sent fifty commemorative cases labelled The Spirit of Free Embo. "Everyone joined in the fun, and we achieved our funding goal that day," Robertson recalled. The centre opened in May 1990. A tank regiment jokingly annexed Dornoch and Golspie, and in 1991 the village twinned itself with Hawaii.
Older history sits just as close. In the thirteenth century a Danish force that had landed at Littleferry was held off by Richard de Moravia until the Earl of Sutherland arrived; Richard died in the fighting, and his damaged sarcophagus survives in Dornoch Cathedral, two and a half miles south. The cathedral, founded in 1224, is the parish church that still serves Embo, and it holds stained glass by Morris & Co and windows commemorating Andrew Carnegie.
Getting here takes some planning. There is no ordinary bus to Dornoch; the village relies on a demand-responsive dial-a-bus run by MacKay's Taxis on weekdays, and the nearest station is Golspie, about four and a half miles off, with a car park but no ticket machine or toilets. Most people arrive by the coast road, which narrows to a single track at one pinch point before the houses begin.
The circular walk to Dornoch and back runs about five and a quarter miles, following paths, the trackbed of the vanished railway and the sand past Royal Dornoch's links and the pier. The trackbed is all that is left of the line that once ran into the village, and it makes a relatively flat, quiet way to come in on foot.
Every three weeks a mobile library van pulls in at the community centre and parks for a while.