The red-sandstone ruins of Fortrose Cathedral stand on a tended green guarded by dark yews, in the middle of a small Highland town on the Black Isle. Only fragments remain: the south aisle and chapel, and the older two-storey north choir aisle, which after the Reformation was pressed into service as the burgh tollbooth, town hall and prison. Off to one side, Euphemia, Countess of Ross, left a late-14th-century chantry aisle with her canopied tomb, its stonework close enough to Elgin Cathedral's that the same masons may have cut it. The local writer Elizabeth Sutherland described the scene at dusk: "the old red sandstone ruins glow against the carefully tended Green guarded by dark sentinel yews."
Cathedral Square sits just off Fortrose's High Street. The Anderson is a hotel, smokehouse and whisky bar with 240 single malts behind the counter and traditional-music sessions on the first and third Sundays of the month. The crime writer Ian Rankin, who stopped in, put it plainly: people had told him it was a great restaurant with amazing beers and whiskies, and they were right. Dogs are welcome throughout.
At 29 High Street the Union Tavern keeps to the older idea of a pub, favoured by locals and by holidaymakers who come back each year. It concentrates on drink, and regulars are known to bring in their own takeaway; dogs are welcome here too.
For food to carry off or eat on the spot, Bakhoos Bakery at number 85 bakes handmade sourdough, viennoiserie and cakes and pours speciality coffee, with no premixes. Scott MacKenzie develops the bread and his wife Charlotte King bakes the cakes. IV10, the café, bar and deli at number 18, opened in 2018 and is run by Emma, Keith and Morag. The kitchen turns out crispy hake with aioli and piquillo-pepper salsa, wood-fired chorizo in cider sauce, Pedro Ximénez pork belly with hazelnut crumb, and pizzas topped with venison or pork salami, hot honey and hazelnuts. The deli sells Scotch eggs, pies, lemon tarts and local and European cheeses, coffee from Cromarty's Vandyke Bros and beer from the Black Isle and Cromarty breweries, and there is a secluded garden out the back where dogs can sit. John Munro, the butcher at number 61, is known for its steak pies.
The reason most people come is the walk. From the cathedral a five-mile circuit runs down past the harbour Thomas Telford built in 1817 for £4,000, out along the golf links to Chanonry Point, then round the shore to Rosemarkie and back through the wooded gorge of Swallows Den. At the point, on a rising tide, dolphins sometimes feed only metres from the shingle, though nothing is promised. Across the firth sits Fort George, and near the lighthouse a memorial marks the Brahan Seer, who folklore says was burned here in a spiked tar barrel.
Inverness is about thirteen miles away, reached by the A9 and A832, with the number 26 bus running in to a stop by the Union Tavern — though it's worth checking times before you travel.
Fortrose was a royal burgh from 1455 and had some 30 shoemakers by 1800. It became known as a garden city by the sea, and many gardens open for charity in summer.