Factfile

n The dumpy lighthouse above Cromarty’s harbour was built by Alan Stevenson in 1846 and now serves as a Field Station for Aberdeen University marine research.

n As you walk along the Paye you are actually treading in the footsteps of Robert the Bruce and James IV. Like countless others, they were following the popular pilgrimage route to the shrine of St Duthac in Tain.

n During the war, when the Firth was used by Naval ships, a heavy underwater steel net was pulled across the milewide by 150-feet-deep passage to prevent the entry of enemy submarines. Winston Churchill himself visited the South Sutor in 1914.

n Like the village of Findhorn across the Moray Firth, the sea has swallowed Old Cromarty. Rather worrying for those in the present town, Thomas the Rhymer once prophesised that Cromarty would be twice destroyed by the sea!