As mentioned on the Home Page, both the Northern Saints Trails and the Northern Pilgrims’ Way owe their existence to the Caithness Book Club, which boasts all of six regular members at it's monthly meetings in St Anne's church hall. One of its books was 'Together in Christ: Following the Northern Saints' by John Woodside. When reading it, a member noticed that there were nine saints with Caithness connections, only two of which she had heard . These were Saint Fergus, the patron saint of Wick and St Magnus of Orkney. When she mentioned this to the group, no one else was any better informed and two other members agreed that these nine saints ought to be better known. So they formed a sub-group to forward this aim, expecting it to take a couple of months. A year later they produced a leaflet, 'The Northern Saints Trails', listing 33 names and 32 sites linked to these names. The sites were organised into six circular routes, four starting in Thurso and two in Wick. (For the curious, the original nine names were Devenick, Drostan, Modan, Fumac, Donnan, Triduana, Fergus, Magnus and Gilbert.)g of your own and dis

In addition to the general aim of making the early Christian history of Caithness more widely appreciated, we added other aims. Firstly, we are keen to remind the various Christian denominations of our common heritage in the hope of furthering the already positive ecumenical spirit in Caithness and the Highlands in general.

Another aim that was adopted early on was to link our work with the North Coast 500 as several of ‘our’ saints had strong links with other parts of the Highlands. So we decided to follow the North Coast 500 in fairly general terms and have more detailed routes based in Wick and Thurso. For the North Coast 500, we have followed the official recommendation of moving in a clockwise direction. If you are not doing this, please read this guide to the end and adapt the information to your own plans. You may well simply be travelling from Inverness to Wick/Thurso/John O’Groats. There are several sites of interest on this road – the Black Isle deserves a whole week-end to itself (see the entries on the cloutie well, Fortrose, Rosemarkie,). Portmahomack is a well-researched Pictish settlement. Further North there are Brora and Clyne (which also includes the Clynelish distillery!), Golspie, Helmsdale and Dunbeath before coming to the various places mentioned in Routes 5 and 6, based in Wick.

Caithness also has a rich heritage of brochs and chambered cairns. It would be well worth the reader’s time to check the various web pages giving details of these and include any that fall within easy reach of their chosen route. We have not included details of them in our descriptions, partly in the interests of clarity but also because this information is readily available from other sources. 

A list of appropriate web sites is included. This will not be complete as the information changes rapidly. There is a surprising amount of material available and we aim only to give the reader some starting points. If we can pass on our enthusiasm for the subject and encourage others to delve into the past with us, then we will be well pleased.