CAITHNESS, the most northerly part of the Scottish mainland, is home to world-class surf, gorgeous peatland, dramatic coastline and the mysterious, towering stacks of rock known as brochs.

Definitely worth a visit are VisitScotland’s five-star Caithness Horizons Museum and Wick Heritage Centre, where a Caithness Glass exhibition sits alongside the 50,000 glass negatives in the Johnson Collection – produced by three generations of the same family. This provides a fascinating look into everyday life in Scotland, including snapshots of the era when Wick was the “herring capital of Europe”.

There is also Lyth Arts Centre, celebrating its 40th Year Retrospective until August. Then there’s the famous town of John O’Groats, the Old Pulteney distillery, the Whaligoe steps, Duncansby Head, or the Old Man of Wick.

Caithness Horizons Museum, the former Town Hall and Carnegie Library building in Thurso opened in 2008 after seven years of hard work.

Curator Joanne Howdle said: “The council and Dounreay came together to form a partnership and the Heritage Society came on-board, so all three collections came to the museum. The idea was to have a museum that told the story of Caithness from geological times to the present day with Dounreay. It took seven years to get the funding in place.

“We’ve had exhibitions from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the British Surfing Museum, Tate Gallery in London, the National Galleries of Scotland, from all over the place. The local school exhibitions are also very popular. We have been attracting 72,000 visitors a year.”