Reay

Links, Clubhouse and Food Along the A836

The golf course at Reay runs in a strip of dune and turf between the A836 and Sandside Bay, and the clubhouse looks straight out over the water. It is an 18-hole links open to visitors, with coaching and "Come and Try" sessions for anyone curious about what a coastal wind does to a golf ball. That wind is the course's defining feature rather than a fault in it, and it has earned admirers: one golf guide called it "one of the coolest golf links courses you'll ever see."

The clubhouse bar is, for now, about the only place in the village to get a drink. The club was founded in 1893, when fifteen enthusiasts met at the Reay Inn on 27 December and made Alex Manson of Sandside their first secretary. James Braid advised on an expansion to eighteen holes in 1933. The course closed in 1940 and came back only in 1962, after Dounreay brought new residents to a place that had been emptying; Donald Carmichael led the restoration. In 2017 the members and volunteers bought it outright.

For food you travel a little. The Halladale Inn at Melvich, seven miles west on the A836, is a dog-friendly café and bistro in an 1882 crofting house run by Tim and Madeline. The kitchen does Scrabster haddock and chips, haggis bonbons with whisky mayonnaise, Balmoral chicken, venison sausages with mash and braised red cabbage, and a Highland burger topped with haggis. A small shop of essentials and local gifts and an off-licence come attached.

Forss House and Reay Hall

East towards Thurso, the restaurant at Forss House Hotel takes non-residents and will seat a dog in the conservatory. It is the only AA Two Rosette place in Caithness, and the seasonal menu has run to Scrabster scallops with cauliflower, Parma ham, almonds and apple, and Scrabster cod with mussels and saffron sauce. The dishes change with the season, so confirm them when you book.

Reay Hall is the indoor centre of things, a 150-seat main hall with a stage and two smaller rooms. In an ordinary week it holds playgroup and toddlers, youth club, junior golf, bowls, badminton, a Gaelic choir and a garden club, and across the year the Hogmanay and gala nights.

Woodland, Coast Trail and Sandside Beach

The walking is quiet and various. Achvarasdal Woodland, about a kilometre from the A836 junction, is a naturalised wood of nearly thirteen hectares with two kilometres of easy paths, thirty-five tree species and a good deal of wildlife; light shoes are enough. The longer route is the coastal stage from Sandside Bay to Melvich, 11.58 kilometres over cliff tops with sea stacks and, on a clear day, views to Ben Loyal, Ben Hope and Cape Wrath. It crosses grazed ground and nesting habitat, so dogs go on leads, and in spring and summer are better left behind. It is a volunteer-built trail still finding its shape.

Sandside Beach is open to the public, with a small car park and seasonal toilets. Fuel fragments from the old Dounreay reprocessing entered the sea decades ago; the sand is now scanned and cleared under a regulated programme, and current advice puts the public risk very low, with no restriction on using the beach. Gathering shellfish within two kilometres of a point near Dounreay remains banned.

Church, Cross-slab and Harbour

The church stands above the bay, white-harled and T-plan, built in 1739, with a hexagonal pulpit and sounding board of about the same date and monuments to the Pilkingtons of Sandside House. About 175 metres east, in the old burial ground, a sandstone cross-slab nearly two metres tall carries key pattern, knotwork and a ringed cross. Probably ninth or tenth century, it was reused as an eighteenth-century grave marker before being built into a mausoleum wall around 1915.

Down at the shore, Sandside Harbour is a small basin of about 1830 with two L-shaped arms, a fishing store and, half-buried in the dunes, a little ice house. Major Innes of Sandside House built it for trade and fishing.

Thurso Connections and the Atomic Queen

Thurso, eleven miles east, is the nearest station and the top of the Far North Line from Inverness; its free visitor centre, in the old town hall and Carnegie library, covers fossils, standing stones and Britain's first nuclear fast reactor. A bus service links Reay and Thurso; check Traveline Scotland before you rely on it.

In 1955 a dance in Reay crowned Margaret Macdonald the "Atomic Queen." Years later she came back to unveil an exhibition holding the control room of the Materials Testing Reactor — part of the industry that had, not long before, brought back the people who reopened the golf course.