Hilton of Cadboll

The Pictish Stone and Chapel

On a raised beach five metres above the Moray Firth, at the northern edge of Hilton, a full-size Pictish cross-slab stands where the original was carved around AD 800. It is a replica; the upper part of the real one has been in the National Museum of Scotland since 1921. The carved face repays a slow look. At the centre is a richly dressed horsewoman riding side-saddle, with mirror-and-comb symbols, more riders, hounds and deer around her. Putting a woman in the central position is exceptionally rare in Pictish sculpture, and it may mean this was a noble or royal scene.

The stone has had an eventful afterlife. It broke and was re-erected, then blew down in a gale in 1674. In 1676 Alexander Duff had the cross face removed and recut as a memorial to himself and his three wives. The lower portion, left in the ground when the slab first broke, was recovered by excavation in 2001 and is preserved for local display.

Beside it are the turf-covered footings of a small chapel, about twelve metres by six and a half. A document of 1610 calls it Our Lady's Chapel. It was ruinous by the 1700s and serving as a shed by 1856, and tradition holds that unbaptised infants were buried here until the end of the nineteenth century.

Three Villages on the Firth

Hilton is the northernmost of three Seaboard villages that run into one another along the coast — Hilton, then Balintore, then Shandwick — all facing east across the firth. Balintore, about a kilometre south, has the harbour and the Seaboard Centre.

The Seaboard Centre café sits on the Balintore seafront, its tables looking over the water. The house breakfast is the Seaboard Scottish Breakfast, which comes with Stornoway black pudding and a homemade tattie scone. The baker turns out meringues, tray bakes, Victoria sponge and cherry Bakewell tart, and once a month a Fish Friday takeaway does fish and chips. The coffee is a blend roasted for the café by the Inverness Coffee Roasting Company and sold by the bag. Dogs are welcome, with Pup Cakes and Puppaccinos for them.

The Balintore Inn is on the seafront too, its bar looking out to sea, with a log fire indoors and a beer garden that shares the view. It does home-cooked food and has rooms if you are not staying nearby.

Trails, Sculpture and Shore

The walking is the reason to base yourself here. A mainly level coastal path, the Seaboard Trail, runs the length of the three villages past dunes, the harbour, old net-drying poles and the sculpture trail, then extends the last kilometre north to Hilton and the stone on a rough shore path or by the road. The Seaboard Sculpture Trail, installed in 2007, sets modern works about fishing, faith, the Four Corners of the Earth, fortitude and folklore along the shore. One of them, Fortitude, remembers Effie of the Two Oars, said to have rowed a large fishing boat home alone after the crew fled an approaching press gang. At Balintore, on a rock called Clach Dubh, sits the Mermaid of the North, made by the Hilton sculptor Steve Hayward.

For a longer outing, the track from Balintore to Rockfield takes about two and a half hours, passing sculpted shore rocks, abandoned salmon-fishing stations and seabird cliffs, with a fair chance of seals or dolphins offshore. Shandwick Bay, at the southern end, is the family beach: sand, dunes, rocks at both ends and room to picnic.

Fishing, Gaelic and Wider Pictish Links

These were fishing and boat-building settlements, and Gaelic held on late here — in 1891 only eight residents were recorded without it. The name Cadboll comes from the Norse Kattar-bol, cat-stead, tied in local tradition to wild cats on the cliffs above.

Between Hilton and Balintore, a former Free Presbyterian church now holds the John Ross Visitor Centre. Ross, born locally, produced the first Korean translation of the New Testament in 1887. Further afield, Nigg Old Church keeps another late-eighth-century cross-slab, and the Tarbat Discovery Centre at Portmahomack stands over the only scheduled Pictish monastic settlement in Scotland.

Arrival and a Rescue at Sea

Fearn, on the Far North Line, is the nearest station, though it is an unstaffed halt with no ticket machine or toilets. By road it is the B9166 to the B9165 and then the A9 south of Tain, and the Tain–Balintore bus stops at the Bottom of Brae — worth checking current times before you travel.

One February night in 1864 a Hilton boat with three adults and two boys aboard was caught in a severe gale off this shore. A handful of men from Hilton and Balintore went out for them, and everyone came home.