Famous Flagstones of the North

One of the things I noticed on our recent trip to the north of Scotland, when we first arrived in the Strathy area, was that a lot of fields had upright flagstones around them, rather than dry stone walls or hedges.

The mystery was solved when we discovered Castlehill, an abandoned flagstone quarry and workers' village on the coast near Castletown.

The beach is full of old flagstones, left over from what used to be a major source of flagstones exported across the world.

 The village and quarry are now a very low key heritage site, with information boards that inform the visitor without dominating the site.

When we later in our trip visited Forsinard Flows nature reserve, we were interested to see that the pathways across the peat bog were constructed of Castlehill flagstones.