Moray Firth shore
Rosemarkie
A seaside village with a long sandy beach, a waterfall glen and a remarkable Pictish cross-slab.
- Best for
- Sandy beach, Pictish history and woodland walks
- Give it
- About an hour for the two-mile Fairy Glen round
- Don't miss
- The 2.6m-high, 8th-century Rosemarkie cross-slab
The Fox verdict
A shore village with Pictish depth
Rosemarkie brings together a long sandy beach, wooded waterfalls and an exceptional early-medieval stone collection.
The beach has rock pools, a picnic area and an equipped seaside play area, while Fairy Glen follows a stepped woodland path to two waterfalls. Groam House Museum adds the 8th-century Rosemarkie cross-slab and the George Bain Collection of Celtic art; the Plough Inn and Crofters Cafe provide two distinct food stops.
Where to go
Places in Rosemarkie
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Plough Inn
A pub serving the community since 1691, with stone-baked pizzas and a wood-lined public bar retaining its original semicircular counter and gantry.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Rosemarkie village
Rosemarkie Beach
A long sandy beach with a picnic area, rock pools and an equipped seaside play area; farther north the shore becomes rough below Scart Craig.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Rosemarkie shore
- Access
- The rough shore beneath Scart Craig is impassable around high tide.
Fortrose Cathedral
A ruined medieval cathedral in the adjoining burgh of Fortrose, practical to reach on foot from Rosemarkie as well as by bus.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Adjoining Fortrose on the A832
- Access
- The ruined cathedral is free to visit.
Food & drink
1 placeCrofters Cafe
A licensed seafront café serving dishes including crispy battered haddock with chips, macaroni cheese and Bannermans breaded scampi, alongside illy coffee and home baking.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- 11 Marine Terrace
Walks & outdoors
2 placesFairy Glen
A clear stepped path through beech, rowan, ash and oak woodland reaches two waterfalls before the route returns by Rosemarkie's sandy beach.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: About one hour for the 3.3km/2-mile round
- Locality
- Behind Rosemarkie village
- Access
- The path becomes steep, uneven and slippery and includes several flights of steps; return through the glen rather than along the fast A832.
Chanonry Point
At this narrow part of the Moray Firth, resident bottlenose dolphins come close to shore; Alan Stevenson's lighthouse was established in 1846.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- About 1km south-east of Rosemarkie
- Access
- The lighthouse tower has no public access.
History & heritage
2 placesRosemarkie Parish Church
Built in 1818–22, the Category B church has a crenellated west tower with carved head stops and an interior horseshoe gallery with an original pulpit.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Rosemarkie
Groam House Museum
The museum stands within an early Christian monastic enclosure and displays the 2.6m-high, 8th-century Rosemarkie cross-slab and the George Bain Collection of Celtic art.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Rosemarkie
- Access
- Admission is by donation.
No places match this filter. Choose All places to reset the list.
Three ways to explore Rosemarkie
Signature outings
Walk to two waterfalls
Follow Fairy Glen's stepped path through beech, rowan, ash and oak to two waterfalls, returning through the glen or by the sandy beach route.
Meet Rosemarkie's cross-slab
See the 2.6m-high, 8th-century Rosemarkie cross-slab, carved with Pictish symbols and Christian crosses, at Groam House Museum.
Look for Moray Firth dolphins
At Chanonry Point, resident bottlenose dolphins come close to shore beside Alan Stevenson's 1846 lighthouse.
The village story
Rosemarkie: shore, glen and Pictish stone
Historic pub details, local food, wooded waterfalls and early-medieval archaeology unfold across Rosemarkie and the nearby coast.
Old pub details and seafront food
The Plough Inn has a fireplace lintel dated 1691 and a wood-lined public bar with its original semicircular counter and gantry. Behind the bar, a tiny room now used as a urinal keeps a serving hatch and is thought to have once been a jug bar. The pub was rebuilt by John Robb in 1907, though it has served the community since 1691. The kitchen's speciality is stone-baked pizza; Jay K.'s testimonial praises the Ploughman's. Cromarty Brewery's Happy Chappy, a session golden ale, is the regular cask beer, alongside a second changing Cromarty beer. Dogs are welcome, and there is a small grassed sun-trap out the back with trestle tables.
Down on the front, Crofters Cafe sits at 11 Marine Terrace, licensed and looking at the water. The haddock comes crispy-battered with chips, salad and tartare sauce; there is macaroni cheese with garlic bread, Bannermans breaded scampi, and a beef burger with bacon and cheese. The coffee is illy, and there is home baking, desserts and ice cream.
Local produce and the sandy shore
The village store, Rosemarkie Stores, is a SPAR at 17 High Street run by Mark and Claire Hemsworth. It carries local goods: bread from Cromarty Bakery, beer from Cromarty Brewery, and milk and ice cream from Black Isle Dairy. The same dairy supplies the Rosemarkie Beach Cafe on the shore.
The beach is long and sandy, the closest of its kind to Inverness, and it has a picnic area, rock pools and an equipped seaside play area. Walk north and the shore turns rough beneath the Scart Craig cliffs, with caves, coloured rock and sea stacks; the going there depends on the tide and is impassable around high water.
Waterfalls, woodland and parish architecture
Behind the village, the Fairy Glen is a two-mile round of about an hour, a stepped path climbing through beech, rowan, ash and oak to two waterfalls and returning along the beach. It steepens and grows slippery near the falls, with several flights of steps. An old millpond in the glen, at least two centuries old, once supplied ice to the village's fish-houses. Children here used to dress a spring-side pool with flowers, to keep the fairies content and the water clean. For a longer day, a circuit out to Caird's Cave, Brown Hill and back down through the glen runs to nearly six miles.
Rosemarkie Parish Church, built between 1818 and 1822, has a crenellated west tower with carved male and female heads for its stops. Inside there is a horseshoe gallery on clustered columns and an original pulpit topped with a crown-shaped sounding board.
Pictish stones and cave archaeology
Groam House Museum stands on the site of an early Christian monastery of around 1,250 years ago. Its centrepiece is the Rosemarkie cross-slab, an 8th-century stone 2.6 metres tall, carved with Pictish symbols and Christian crosses; the museum also holds the George Bain collection of Celtic art, runs family activities and Pictish board games, and asks only for a donation to enter. The building was given to the town in 1974 by a resident, Mario Pagliari, and opened as a museum in 1981.
The caves along the shore have produced stranger things. In one, archaeologists found a man buried in an alcove sometime between AD 430 and 631, violently killed, probably local, and, from his bones, fed on an unusually pig-rich diet. Whether he was murdered or ritually killed is still argued.
Cathedral walk and dolphin coast
Fortrose, with its ruined medieval cathedral, is a walk of about a mile down the A832, free to wander and close enough to reach on foot; the Cromarty bus stops at the Fairy Glen car park on Bridge Street.
A kilometre the other way, the coast narrows at Chanonry Point, where resident bottlenose dolphins come in close to shore on the turning tide, watched from the beach beneath Alan Stevenson's 1846 lighthouse.
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 Rosemarkie?
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.
- The Plough Inn — theploughinnrosemarkie.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Crofters Cafe — crofterscafe.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Rosemarkie Beach — gov.scot statutory register or public authority
- Fairy Glen — rspb.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Rosemarkie Parish Church — portal.historicenvironment.scot statutory register or public authority
- Groam House Museum — groamhouse.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Chanonry Point — nlb.org.uk other published source
- Fortrose Cathedral — historicenvironment.scot statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access