Thurso

Thurso Lifeboat and Scrabster Harbour

Thurso is mainland Scotland's most northerly town, and home to the country's most northerly railway station. Located on the north coast of Caithness, its seaward views are dominated by the distant cliffs of Dunnet Head to the north east, and those of the island of Hoy to the north.

War Memorial Old St Peter's Church Scrabster Harbour

Modern Thurso tends to be seen as a stepping stone en route to somewhere else rather than as a destination in its own right, although the sometimes turbulent seas of the Pentland Firth have led to Thurso becoming an unlikely centre for surfing.

Thurso has long been a gateway to Orkney, with the best established of the ferry routes to Orkney, the car ferry to Stromness, leaving from the harbour at Scrabster, now virtually a westward extension of Thurso itself.

Thurso is also a point of departure for those embarking on the best scenic route Scotland has to offer, the 140 miles taking in the north and west coasts via Durness to Ullapool. A quarter of a century ago this route comprised sometimes tortuous single track roads the whole way and included a ferry crossing (or a 100 mile detour along more single track roads) at Kylesku.

Traill Street

Public Library

Thurso Castle

In more recent times the arrival of the Kylesku Bridge and many stretches of road wide enough to boast white lines down the middle have made the far north west much more accessible. But recent developments have done nothing to diminish the utterly superb scenery the area has to offer: and there remain some stretches of single track road to add interest to the trip, especially around Durness. If you are intending to go this way, make sure you have filled up with fuel before heading west from Thurso.

Thurso's origins are revealed in its name, which comes from the Norse for Thor's River. The Vikings were well established here from as early as the 900s, using the river mouth as a port and fishing base. After the Viking's eviction from Caithness by the Scots in the early 1200s, Thurso continued to grow around its fishing and trade. Little remains from its early days, though the now roofless Old St Peter's Church was first established in 1220.

In 1798, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster built Thurso's New Town to the south and west of the Old Town with wide streets laid out on a regular grid. Today much of the original pattern of both old and new towns remains on view. In the 1850s Scrabster, to the west of Thurso, developed into an important harbour.

This led to a reduction in significance of the old port in the mouth of the Thurso River, but it also increased traffic for the area as a whole, with steamer links to Orkney and Shetland, as well as to Oban and Leith.

4 led to boom times for the flagstone industry in the area, which employed up to 1000 men. By the end of the 1800s, despite paving virtually the whole of Paris during the 1890s, the industry was in decline and Thurso's economy followed it, only to revive once more for its most recent bout of growth.

This followed the establishment from 1954 of the Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment at a disused wartime airfield eight miles to the west of the town. At its peak in the 1970s Dounreay employed 3500 people, many of whom lived in Thurso. Employment levels have declined since then, but even the task of decommissioning the establishment will ensure a significant contribution to the economy of the area for a long time to come.