Strathpeffer: once a spa town but much quieter now

Driving into Strathpeffer gives me a sort of architectural whiplash. You’re in a quiet Highland glen, expecting a few stone cottages, and suddenly there are great Victorian villas, grand hotels and an ornate wooden Pavilion that might have come straight out of a German spa town. It makes more sense when you know what people came here for. The sulphur springs were supposed to do you a power of good, and a whole resort grew up around the business of persuading people to drink the stuff.

The buildings give you the impression that you’ve arrived somewhere where there ought to be quite a bit going on. In season, you can see the coaches pull up and the hotel dining rooms fill at six, yet walk down the street at the same hour and you might wonder where everybody’s gone. It feels to me as though the play finished fifty years ago and nobody quite figured out what to do with the stage. The Pavilion still puts on shows, but on an ordinary evening I’d expect a quiet night. Once I stopped expecting Strathpeffer to live up to that grand entrance, I found I rather liked it.

There’s an EV charger in the square and little else in the way of facilities for motorists. I’d set off on foot for the Eagle Stone, a Pictish carving a short climb above the village, where there’s a bench looking down the valley towards Dingwall. You’ll find 'The Eagle Stone waiting for the sea' in the History and Heritage section of our Discover page. For a longer walk, head through the big Douglas firs in Blackmuir Wood and out onto the open ridge of the Cat’s Back, which takes you to the Iron Age fort at Knockfarrel and a view right out to the Cromarty Firth.

I’d give Strathpeffer an afternoon on a North Coast 500 trip. It’s a pleasure to leave the car behind for a few hours, and if I’ve brought a book, I can quite happily finish up in the Pavilion gardens. In the blogcast, I’ll take you through a day when those gardens had their own orchestra and visitors started the morning with a glass of sulphur water.

To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer Private Tours.