Seven miles northeast of Helmsdale is Badbea, a crofting village established at the time of the Clearances and gradually abandoned in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. A 500m walk through the heather leads you to the windy, atmospheric clifftop site where house foundations and a monument erected by a returned emigrant son mark the former community.
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
19.05 MILES
Magnificent Dunrobin Castle, a mile past Golspie, is the Highlands' largest house. Although it dates to 1275, most of what you see was built in French…
24.89 MILES
This intriguing museum has some excellent carved Pictish stones. When ‘crop circles’ appeared in aerial photos some years ago, the foundations of an Iron…
25.63 MILES
Tracking the rise and fall of the herring industry, this great town museum displays everything from fishing equipment to complete herring boats. It’s…
26.18 MILES
Consecrated in the 13th century, beautiful Dornoch Cathedral, one of the Highlands' loveliest churches, is an elegant Gothic edifice with an interior…
18.37 MILES
Dating from between 4000 BC and 2500 BC, these burial chambers are hidden in long, low mounds rising from an evocatively lonely moor. The Long Cairn…
Forsinard Flows Visitor Centre
18.58 MILES
On the platform at Forsinard railway station is the RSPB's Forsinard Flows Visitor Centre, an exhibition dedicated to the neighbouring nature reserve…
4.85 MILES
In the heart of Helmsdale, this heritage centre has an impressive display covering local history, including a Pictish stone, the Clearances, the fishing…
19.12 MILES
At Ulbster, 5 miles north of Lybster, this staircase cut into the cliff provides access to a tiny natural harbour, with an ideal grassy picnic spot,…
Nearby attractions
4.85 MILES
In the heart of Helmsdale, this heritage centre has an impressive display covering local history, including a Pictish stone, the Clearances, the fishing…
7.28 MILES
This heritage centre has a stone carved with runic graffiti, and a display on the work of Neil Gunn, whose wonderful novels evoke the Caithness of his…
8.38 MILES
This museum, just over a mile north of Dunbeath, recreates crofting life from the mid-1800s to WWII. It's in an 18th-century Caithness longhouse with a…
4. Clan Gunn Heritage Centre & Museum
10.83 MILES
At the Clan Gunn Heritage Centre and Museum in Latheron, 3 miles northeast of Dunbeath on the A9, there's information on the Gunn clan, from its Viking…
13.32 MILES
At the picturesque harbour in Lybster, this museum has a downstairs cafe, and an exhibition on the town's fishing heritage above. There's a smokehouse…
14.64 MILES
Six miles to the northwest of Lybster and a mile off the A9, these 30 standing stones date from around 2000 BC. The crumbling monuments still capture the…
17.15 MILES
Two miles beyond the Camster turn-off on the A99 is a curious, fan-shaped arrangement of 22 rows of small stones, probably dating to around 2000 BC…
18.37 MILES
Dating from between 4000 BC and 2500 BC, these burial chambers are hidden in long, low mounds rising from an evocatively lonely moor. The Long Cairn…