Wick

Ebenezer Place and No 1 Bistro

Ebenezer Place, beside the River Wick, is promoted as the world's shortest street; No 1 Bistro, part of Mackays Hotel, holds its only address. The same family has run the place for more than sixty years. It will feed non-residents on smoked fish from the Caithness Smokehouse and locally grown vegetables, and the menu runs to sirloin steak, mushroom ravioli in herb sauce, a chicken club sandwich, and a prawn sandwich with Marie Rose. A Sunday might bring chicken-liver parfait, braised steak with creamy potatoes, and a chocolate fondant with raspberry sorbet. Two dogs, Max and Bria, live on the premises and lounge around the bar, and guests' dogs are welcome too.

The Nethercliffe Hotel was built as a house in 1824, one of the oldest buildings in Caithness. The original cornicing survives, and a cast-iron cooking range still stands in what were the servants' quarters down in the cellar. Its south-facing garden is set up for a glass of Old Pulteney, the local whisky. The Norseman, on Riverside, keeps a restaurant called Crofter's and puts homemade sausage rolls out with its afternoon tea.

Farm Food and the Working Harbour

Three miles out, at Upper Puldagon Farm, a barn was converted into a shop and restaurant in 2019. It serves burgers from its own Highland beef, Scrabster haddock with hand-cut chips, pancakes with blueberries and Belgian chocolate, and scones with cream and jam. On Harbour Quay, Wickers World looks straight out over the working harbour, and you can sit there with a coffee, fish and chips or homemade baking while the boats come and go. One customer, Joanne McCallum, wrote: "I chose the delicious meringue and enjoyed it as I looked out at Wicks beautiful harbour."

The Old Wick Coastal Circuit

The clearest way to understand the town is the circuit out to the Castle of Old Wick, about four and three-quarter miles and two hours on clear paths. It leaves the harbour, climbs through old Pulteneytown to the cliff top, and passes the Trinkie, an open-air tidal pool cut into the rock and restored in 2021, free to anyone who fancies the cold. The four-storey castle ruin stands on a narrow promontory with severe drops to either side; window slits and a second-floor fireplace remain. Beyond it is the Brig o' Stack, a natural arch. North of town, a longer walk takes in Castle Sinclair Girnigoe and Noss Head, and inland lie the Grey Cairns of Camster, two Neolithic tombs raised more than five thousand years ago.

Herring and Pulteneytown History

Wick was, in the Wick Society's phrase, "a place of little account" until herring changed it. From 1767 the trade grew until the British Fisheries Society's harbour and Telford's planned streets of Pulteneytown around it made this Europe's largest herring port. On Black Saturday in August 1848 a sudden gale caught the fleet at the harbour bar: eighteen boats were lost and thirty-seven men drowned, and a lifeboat station opened the same year. James Henderson founded the Pulteney Distillery in 1826; production stopped for twenty-seven years before Bertie Cumming restarted it in 1951, and Telford's 1807 lade still carries water down from Loch Hempriggs. At the centre of Argyle Square, Pulteneytown Parish Church went up in 1842, built of Caithness stone with yellow sandstone margins and galleries carried on cast-iron columns.

Herring History and the Town Today

The station on Station Road is managed by ScotRail and has step-free access to the platforms, and the A99 runs through the town toward John o' Groats. The Wick Heritage Museum, in former homes and business premises on Bank Row, keeps the fishing boats, the Isabella Fortuna, and the Johnston photographic collection, some forty thousand images of the place. It also runs Wick Voices, recording residents talking about the herring years and the town they grew up in.