Munlochy

The Pub and the Organic Brewery

The Allangrange stands on Millbank Road with stags' heads on the walls, rough-sawn timber and a run of cosy booths that give the bar the feel of a hunting lodge. It was the Munlochy Hotel once, and still keeps five rooms upstairs. The kitchen leans on Scottish produce. The pork cooked with Cromarty ale is a highlight, and the burgers are built for a large appetite. Two Cromarty cask ales are usually on, though in quieter weeks it may be just the Happy Chappy.

Black Isle Porter is brewed close by. The brewery sits at Old Allangrange on the edge of the village, turning out organic beer since 1998 and running a five-acre market garden that grows vegetables, fruit and herbs for its bars using no-dig and biodynamic methods. The small shop carries the Blonde Organic Lager, the Red Kite, the Goldfinch Organic Gluten-Free Session IPA and the Hibernator Oatmeal Stout, among others.

Daytime Food, Market and the Clootie Well

For daytime eating there is Munro's Nurseries at Bogallan, a family garden centre off the B9161 with a coffee shop doing breakfast, light lunches, afternoon tea and home baking. On the first Saturday of the month the hall fills with a community market of gifts, crafts and a community café.

A couple of miles out, off the A832 before you reach the village, the Clootie Well is a spring hung with strips of cloth, tied there by people hoping to leave an illness behind, a practice that reaches back to the earliest Celtic period and is still going. A firm gravel path leads in before turning to earth, roots and a muddy patch; a longer woodland loop runs about three-quarters of a mile beside the Big Burn under Douglas firs and western hemlocks. "The Clootie Well has been a place people have visited for hundreds of years and the woodlands around the Well are a great place to enjoy a mindful walk with the whole family," says Kirsty Knight, a seasonal ranger there.

A Tidal Bay and a Decorated Church

Munlochy itself sits at the head of a long tidal bay, between wooded Wood Hill to the north and Craigiehowe, with its rougher coast and caves, to the south. The bay is mudflat and saltmarsh, part of the Inner Moray Firth protected area, and busy with birds; greylag geese and wigeon have historically wintered here in numbers. Two tidal mills once worked the bay head. When an 1812 lease was drawn up for the miller Andrew Provost, it already anticipated that a new road across the bay would interfere with the tides and stop the mill grinding, and a possible sluice site can still be traced in the landscape.

The church, built in red sandstone in 1886, carries more decoration than its size would lead you to expect: lancet windows, a rose window, pinnacled buttresses, and inside galleries on three sides, Doric and Corinthian columns, and a panelled roof pierced with flower- and star-shaped vents.

The Hall, Play Area and Wider Black Isle

The village hall has been going since the late 1800s, when it served as a drill hall; residents raised £2,500 to buy it for themselves in 1970. It now holds a stage, a games room and a meeting room, and there is a play area for children nearby.

The village runs along the B9161. Inverness is about fifteen minutes by car, with Stagecoach's 26 and 26A running through to the city one way and out to Avoch, Fortrose, Rosemarkie and Cromarty the other. That same bus reaches the Fairy Glen waterfalls at Rosemarkie, the ruined cathedral at Fortrose with Countess Euphemia's canopied tomb, and Chanonry Point, a good spot for watching dolphins from the shore, timetable permitting.

Cloth on the Branches

Back at the well, strips of cloth in every stage of fading hang from the branches, tied by whoever passed through last.