Whaligoe

The Hidden Harbour and Its Descent

Nearly 330 flagstone steps dog-leg down the cliff at Whaligoe, dropping from a scatter of clifftop houses to a grassy platform called the Bink, wedged between vertical rock at the head of a narrow inlet on the North Sea. The harbour is largely concealed from the top. The land runs flat across Caithness pasture and then falls away without warning, and only once you start down do the old quay, a cliff waterfall and the sea caves come into view below.

The Steps are the reason to come, and they ask for care: extremely steep, with unprotected drops the whole way. Historic Environment Scotland dates the flight to the mid-18th century, with heavy repairs in the early 1800s. Thomas Telford surveyed the place in 1786 and pronounced it a "terrible spot." Captain David Brodie disagreed to the tune of £8, which he spent improving the descent; by 1814 the haven worked fourteen herring boats.

Fishing Work and Volunteer Repair

The work here was hard. Herring, cod, haddock and ling were gutted at the foot of the cliff, and creels of fish were carried back up the steps and then seven miles on foot to Wick. Barrels came down from a clifftop cooperage to be filled with salted herring and shipped out by schooner. You can still find the fishing station's fabric among the rocks: a bark kettle for boiling nets, a fire recess beneath it, lamp niches cut into the stone, and heavy chains fixed into the cliff face.

The fishery emptied slowly. Five salmon boats remained in 1920, two by 1946, and the last boat stopped working from Whaligoe in the 1960s. After a landslip in 1975, Etta Juhle cleared about thirty tons of rubble from the steps by herself. Since 1998 David Nicolson of Ulbster, the historian Iain Sutherland and a handful of volunteers have rebuilt stonework, restored the bark kettles and cut the summer grass.

Food and Essentials in Lybster

Lybster, a few miles down the A99, supplies the essentials. The Portland Hotel there has a bar and restaurant with a real fire and a garden; Sam and Jeff run it, and one guest called it quaint and very accommodating, while another singled out the fish and chips. The Lybster SPAR has bread, hot food to go, an off-licence and a cash machine. Down at the harbour, Waterlines pairs a small herring-boom museum with a coffee shop and a craft counter, looking onto water where boats still lay creels for lobster and crab.

Cairn Walk and Onward Travel

For a longer outing, the Steps link on a three-kilometre walk to the Cairn of Get, a chambered cairn built some time between 4000 and 2500 BC, reached across rough, boggy pasture and boardwalk. Wick, seven miles north on the A99, has the nearest railway station; buses 275 and 918 pass this way.

The Steps’ Long-Serving Caretaker

Davie Nicholson has looked after the Steps for years. If you meet him at the top, he may show you photographs and tell you about his grandfather's boat.