Castletown Hotel

The Castletown Hotel sits at the centre of Castletown village on the A836, the north-coast road that runs from Thurso eastward to John o’ Groats. It is the middle property of the Caithness Collection’s three-hotel set and the most useful base for visiting the genuine northern tip of the Scottish mainland, Dunnet Head, three miles north of the village, is the actual most-northerly point (not John o’ Groats, despite the road signs there).

Castletown was a flagstone-quarrying village through the nineteenth century. Caithness flagstone, a fine-grained Devonian sandstone splitting into natural slabs, paved the streets of Edinburgh, London, Paris and Sydney, and the industry concentrated here because the geology cropped out at the surface. The Castlehill Heritage Centre at the harbour walks visitors through the rise and the long decline of the trade; ruined kilns and the cut faces of the harbour quarries are still visible along the coast.

From the hotel it is a few minutes to Dunnet Bay’s two-mile sweep of sand (one of the finest beaches in the north, regularly used by surfers in summer); around fifteen minutes by car to Thurso; and forty-five minutes east to John o’ Groats and Duncansby Head with its sea stacks and gannet colony.

Rooms, restaurant and bar at the hotel; the Collection runs a shared booking system across its three properties. Current rates and reservations at the Caithness Collection website.