Thurso

Reef, River and Arrival

At the mouth of the River Thurso, where the water meets the Pentland Firth, a kelp-covered reef throws up a fast right-hander that Surfline calls "world class on its day." This is Thurso East. The break is an expert's spectacle.

The town behind it is laid out on a grid. Sir John Sinclair set it down around 1810, a compact rectangle of streets that sits against the older, winding core near High Street and Fisherbiggens. You do not see any of it until you are almost in it; the main roads drop into a shallow dip and there it is, sandy bay, harbour, cliffs on either side. The station is on Princes Street, at the end of the Far North Line, with trains south to Inverness via Georgemas Junction. The A9 reaches its northern end at Scrabster Harbour, just west of Thurso.

Tables and Bars

For eating, Bydand is the place to start, at 2 Traill Street. Head chef Brian Gordon runs it, and the kitchen turns out pork belly with cauliflower purée and cider jus, slow-braised beef with swede and a red-wine jus, and its own kiln-smoked salmon. "I love food, I love the culinary aspect of it, and the delight of working with our beautiful, fresh Caithness produce," Gordon says. Cardosi's, an Italian kitchen going since 2002, does coffee-flavoured desserts and caramel pudding. Several hotel restaurants are also options: the Park Hotel does roast beef, steak and locally landed fish; the Holborn's Red Pepper restaurant works from market fish and Caithness beef; the Pentland's dining room leans on Caithness seafood.

Top Joe's, in the Central Hotel, calls itself the UK's most northerly sports bar, keeps professional pool tables and fields three Thurso Pool League teams; dogs are welcome. The Commercial Hotel's Eh Comm Bar is over 150 years old and reckons itself the oldest bar in Caithness, though it serves breakfast but no evening meals. Out on the western edge, the Weigh Inn has a conservatory looking across the firth to Orkney.

Caithness Provisions

For provisions, Reids of Caithness is the bakery: pure-butter shortbread and steak pies, Scottish Baker of the Year in 2017, and once the supplier of bread and cakes to the Queen Mother during her holidays at the Castle of Mey. North Coast Butchers sells meat alongside local neeps, tatties, eggs and, in season, strawberries.

Flagstone Path and Old Kirk

A popular walk follows the river out past Old St Peter's Kirk to the beach, then along a flagstone-lined coastal path to Scrabster, five miles there and back, with Hoy and a sea stack offshore. Old St Peter's itself is roofless now, a cruciform ruin that may have begun as a twelfth-century bishop's minster; part of it once served as a court house and prison. In 1896 a cross slab carrying a runic inscription turned up behind it.

Bakers, Fossils and Brigade Beginnings

The town keeps its inventors close. Robert Dick came here at nineteen to open a bakery, taught himself botany and geology, found new fossils and rediscovered Holy Grass thought extinct in Caithness, and rejected offers to teach at Edinburgh University to keep baking. William Alexander Smith, born at Pennyland House, drilled boys on the beach before he left to found the Boys' Brigade in Glasgow. His badges and books are still in the town, in a small museum you can visit by appointment.