To celebrate the creation of this section of the Haggis Highway events will take place on 5th, 6th and 7th October 2012.
The events are as follows:
Wick ~ Bar Blether GC3PQ71 - Friday 5th October from 19:00
Wick ~ Dinner GC3PQ89 - Saturday 6th October from 17:00
Dunbeath ~ Lunch GC3PQ8R - Sunday 7th October 10:00~12:00
Bighouse Lodge, near Melvich is a notable in the history of the clan Mackay whose most powerful cadet branch built the house less than twenty years after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. The large B-listed mansion house rivals prominent houses built by Mackay chiefs at Tongue and Balnakeil. As well as the house, there is a large garden. Its walls and unusual pavilion, thought to have been built at the same time as the house, are A-listed. A house in the grounds known as The Barrocks Bighouse enjoys a fine setting on the estuary of the Halladale River. There are no signposts pointing the way, down a winding single-track road.
Near the only junction, you can see a large stone pillar, signifying the start of an old toll road into Caithness. There are still coins in a stone bowl at its foot. The house, at the end of the road, is large and, according to architectural historian Elizabeth Beaton, “severely symmetrical”. It has twice been added to in the post-Mackay period, which began in 1830 when it was sold to the Sutherland Estates for £58,000. It was to be the “end of an auld sang,” the last of the Mackay houses (and lands) to go under the hammer. By then it contained thirty-five rooms.
The cache is a small box with FTF card, logbook and swap.