Above the pier at Portskerra stands a memorial to twenty-six fishermen lost off this coast. It names three dates: 5 December 1848, 25 June 1890, and 22 August 1918. In the 1890 storm the boats Excelsior, Lively and Diadem went down with twenty men aboard, the Excelsior crewed almost entirely by fishermen from Port Vasco. The verse cut into the stone was written by Hugh Macintosh, a Portskerra man born in 1901, and it remembers "those who perished within sight of their homes."
The memorial's car park is also where the coast walk begins. The pier-and-jetty loop is short, a little over a mile, but the ground rolls: a grassy, undulating path runs past a small footbridge to the old jetty, then loops back on minor tarmac lanes. Keep going to the concrete pier and you look straight across the bay to the sand of Melvich Beach. It is about forty-five minutes at an unhurried pace, with enough up and down to feel earned.
The village itself sits on a loop road off the A836, strung along the east-facing slope above Melvich Bay. The harbour below is small and rock-bound, owned by Highland Council and still used for leisure and fishing. Look out and the view runs to the cliffs of Rubha an Tuir; on a clear day it reaches Dunnet Head and, beyond it, Orkney. The Gaelic name is Port Sgeire.
For everyday supplies you cross to Melvich, less than a mile southeast. West End Stores and Post Office occupies a former crofter's building that once went by the name Fern Cottage, set between the A836 and Portskerra. Paul and Flora run it now, having taken over from a man who kept the counter for twenty years, and it stocks the useful spread of a coastal village shop: dairy, fruit and vegetables, chilled and frozen food, drinks, confectionery, stationery, gifts, household goods and toiletries.
Bell's seafood vans work a weekly round through Melvich and Portskerra. Times shift, so it is worth asking locally before you plan a meal around one.
For a sit-down breakfast, the Halladale Inn in neighbouring Melvich is a licensed cafe and bistro in an 1882 croft house on the A836, run by Tim and Madeline. The Full Scottish comes with smoked back bacon, a link or Lorne sausage, egg, tattie scone, haggis, black pudding, beans, mushrooms and tomato; there is Eggs Royale with Scottish smoked salmon, pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, and vegan and vegetarian versions. Dogs are welcome, on leads on the adjoining campsite. It runs seasonally rather than year-round, so check before you rely on it.
Melvich Beach lies immediately across the bay, but it is a separate outing, best reached from its own signed car park off the A836. Golden sand backed by dunes sits beside the mouth of the River Halladale, hemmed in by Portskerra pier to the west and the partly overhanging cliffs of Rubha an Tuir to the east. The route is tide-dependent, and its riverside footbridge was closed on safety grounds at last report, so check locally and do not cross it unless you can confirm it has reopened.
The village loop road leaves the A836 at Melvich, and the A897 runs south from there through Strath Halladale. The nearest station is Forsinard, down that road, a stop with a small car park and a shelter and no ticket office. On weekdays the 274 bus links Thurso, Melvich and Bettyhill, stopping at the Halladale Inn, and a pre-booked dial-a-bus covers the A836 between Melvich and Bettyhill.
The station at Forsinard now houses the visitor centre for the RSPB's Forsinard Flows, part of the great blanket bog that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024. The one-mile Dubh Lochan Trail runs out on boardwalk to a lookout over the peat; the four-mile Forsinain Trail takes two to three hours.
Herring fishing here lasted until 1948, and the last Portskerra boat was sold in the 1970s. Near the village lie two graves of shipwrecked mariners, marked by small upright slabs with incised designs. One of them carries an anchor.