Burn, harbour and herring history
Latheronwheel
A planned 1835 settlement descending to a nineteenth-century harbour, with a wooded burn, an old footbridge and a nearby fairy walk.
- Harbour heritage
- Around 50 boats worked here at its peak
- Local walk
- 1.4 miles through the wooded burn
- Nearby extension
- Waterlines at Lybster, four miles northeast
The Fox verdict
A small harbour village with a long shoreline story
Latheronwheel brings together a rocky Moray Firth inlet, a bridge probably built in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, herring-era remains and a Fairy Forest along the burn.
Begin at the harbour to see the landing beach, cliff-built storehouse and stone-lined burn edge, then follow the burn through the trees. Nearby museum and harbour-centre visits extend the story through Caithness fishing history and the landscape associated with Neil M. Gunn.
Where to go
Places in Latheronwheel
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesHarbour Road Play Area
A Highland Council-listed open play area cleared through the 2017–18 community project, which also installed two wheelchair-suitable benches.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Harbour Road
Dunbeath Heritage Museum
A museum exploring Dunbeath's people, arts and culture, with particular attention to the novelist Neil M. Gunn.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- the Old School in Dunbeath
- Access
- The display is on one level, with accessible parking and a ramp.
Dunbeath Strath
A landscape walk connected by the museum's route notes to Neil Gunn's novel Highland River.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Dunbeath Strath
History & heritage
3 placesLatheronwheel Harbour
A nineteenth-century fishing harbour with a landing beach, cliff-built storehouse and stone-lined burn edge; around 50 boats worked from the inlet at its peak.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- at the mouth of the Burn of Latheronwheel
- Access
- Walking is easy around the harbour; going is more difficult on the shingle beach.
Wade's Bridge
A Category C-listed, hump-backed rubble bridge with a dressed arch ring, probably dating from the mid-to-late eighteenth century.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 20 minutes
- Locality
- near the harbour
- Access
- The bridge has no parapet and now carries a footpath over the burn.
Waterlines
A harbour visitor centre combining local natural-history and herring-fishery displays with a coffee shop, local-craft gift shop, lighthouse and sheltered pebble beach.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Lybster
Things to do
1 placeLatheronwheel Fairy Glen
A woodland walk beside the burn with fairy houses along the route; Highland Council records that its Community Payback scheme, working with the area improvement group, made three of them from tree stumps.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- from the harbour along the wooded burn
- Access
- The route includes some steep viewpoint steps.
No places match this filter. Choose All places to reset the list.
Three ways to explore Latheronwheel
Signature outings
Follow the Fishery Footprint
An 1840 harbour plan records the work beyond the boats: a curing station, salt cellars, coopers' shops and winter boat storage.
Take the Old Footpath Span
Compare this eighteenth-century harbour crossing with Telford's 1809–13 bridge farther uphill; the two spans trace changing routes through Latheronwheel.
Continue the Herring Story
Explore Lybster's fishing past in Waterlines' permanent exhibitions, then step outside to the John O'Groats Walking Trail behind the centre.
The village story
From the Burn to the Herring Shore: Latheronwheel
Follow Latheronwheel from its rocky Moray Firth harbour through the Fairy Forest, then explore local food, fishing history and nearby coastal stops.
Harbour and Burn
The Burn of Latheronwheel runs down through a wooded glen and out at a narrow rocky inlet on the Moray Firth, where a small nineteenth-century harbour sits below high cliffs. A landing beach, a storehouse built into the rock and a stone-lined channel for the burn are surviving evidence of a fishery that once kept around fifty boats. You come down to it from the A9, through a broad valley, with the village opening out ahead as you go.
Just above the harbour, Wade's Bridge carries a footpath over the burn — a single hump-backed span of rubble with a dressed arch ring and no parapet, about forty-eight feet across, probably built in the later eighteenth century before Telford ran a higher road through around 1810. Walking is easy around the harbour and harder on the shingle beach, and there are picnic benches and free parking at the bottom. Birds nest along the rocks by the jetty.
Local Food and a Country Pub
There is a good butcher: Donald Cormack, a family business on Harbour Road, known for hand-cut bacon, sausages, haggis and black pudding. At Smerral, the next hamlet along, the family-run Ice & Fire Distillery makes small-batch gin flavoured with salmonberries and purple heather tips gathered from the croft around it.
The Old Smiddy Inn at Thrumster, out on the road toward Wick, is a nearby option — a small country pub with a lounge bar and an open fire, where the regulars are local and the evening sometimes turns to stories, songs and bagpipes. Recent menus have included homemade soup, spicy potato wedges, prawn cocktail, haddock and scampi, chicken strips, chocolate-orange cheesecake and sticky-toffee pudding. One recent visitor called it "a proper pub, with proper food, no gastro pub mumbo jumbo nonsense."
The Blends and Coastal Neighbours
The former Dunbar's Hotel is now a bed and breakfast called The Blends. It took the name from an 1890s proprietor who blended whisky of uncertain legal standing; Jo and Steve Atkins run it today, and will cook evening meals and make up packed lunches for guests who ask.
Four miles up the coast at Lybster, the Waterlines centre keeps displays on the herring fishery and the local wildlife, a lighthouse and a sheltered pebble beach, with a coffee shop doing crab rolls, panini and cake. Dunbeath, the other way, has a heritage museum in the old school given largely to the novelist Neil Gunn, whose Highland River follows the strath behind it. The cliff staircase at Whaligoe is another short drive off.
Road Links and the Herring Years
The village sits directly on the A9 between Wick and Helmsdale; the 918 bus calls at the shelter on weekdays, and Stagecoach's X99 between Inverness and Thurso calls at Latheron Post Office.
It was laid out as a planned settlement from 1835 on Captain Dunbar's land. He wanted it named Janetstown after his wife, and the name lingers on old maps. The harbour followed a few years later, with tenants taking two-acre plots and the right to fish; at its height about fifty boats worked the inlet, salmon giving way to herring. A surveyor's plan of 1840 labels a curing station, salt cellars, a cooperage, coopers' shops, a curing beach and a boatbuilder's shed. In the herring season crews came down from Lewis and lodged with the boat owners, and the catch went by cart to the railway at Helmsdale.
Ancient Ground and the Fairy Glen
Older things sit in the ground around the village: a broch, long and chambered cairns, a pair of standing stones. West of the houses two whalebone ribs stand upright in the grass, thought locally to be more than a hundred years old.
Back at the harbour, a path follows the burn up through the trees for about 1.4 miles, past carved trunks and small toadstool houses tucked into the banks, with steep steps to a viewpoint near the top. Highland Council records that its Community Payback scheme worked with the local improvement group to make three fairy houses from tree stumps. Children can come down to find the doors.
Stay around Scottish Highlands
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Scottish Highlands, linked directly to their property pages.
For homeowners
Own a holiday home near Latheronwheel?
We manage holiday lets across the UK from 12% commission, charged after cleaning costs, with no lock-in. A co-founder visits before you decide.
How our holiday let management works →
A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Latheronwheel Harbour — thebrochproject.co.uk other published source
- Wade's Bridge — her.highland.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Latheronwheel Fairy Glen — thebrochproject.co.uk other published source
- Harbour Road Play Area — highland.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Waterlines — waterlineslybster.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Dunbeath Heritage Museum — dunbeath-heritage.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Dunbeath Strath — dunbeath-heritage.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access