The 'Pilgrims' Way' through Camster

Camster Cairns should be visited by anyone interested in prehistory and travelling the North Coast 500, yet the monuments may form only part of the story. Approach them from the Lybster side and the road runs remarkably straight through an otherwise empty landscape. It appears to be taking you somewhere, although today it leads nowhere of obvious importance. I believe that this modern road may preserve the memory of a much older route.

Neolithic Orkney was one of the most powerful cultural centres in Britain. The Ness of Brodgar became a great gathering place, while architectural styles and ideas developed in Orkney travelled far beyond the islands. The Orkney vole provides evidence of even longer-distance movement because its ancestors were brought to the islands by people more than 5,000 years ago, with genetic research pointing towards coastal Belgium or northern France. This does not prove a route through Caithness, but it demonstrates that people, possessions and animals could travel extraordinary distances.

The final approach to Orkney presented a dangerous obstacle. The Pentland Firth is governed by powerful tides and violent races around its headlands, yet a BBC reconstruction demonstrated that a willow-framed hide boat could cross between Orkney and the coast below the Castle of Mey when handled by people who understood the water. Travellers approaching from the south may therefore have landed on the Caithness coast before walking overland towards a recognised crossing place, avoiding the exposed voyage around Duncansby Head.

This is where Camster enters my story. I cannot prove that prehistoric travellers passed the cairns on their way to Orkney or that the monuments were built to overlook their route. My theory comes from standing in the landscape and considering how people might have moved through it. Perhaps the straight road approaching Camster echoes an ancient way north, while these enormous monuments were deliberately positioned where travellers would encounter them. Camster may not simply have been a destination. It may have stood beside the road to somewhere even more powerful.

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