Fyrish Monument: The Day We Climbed Above the Clouds

• Built: 1782
• Round trip: 4 miles / 6.5km
• Ascent: 270m
• Parking: Free

We picked a misty morning for our climb up Fyrish — not thick fog, but enough that we wondered what we'd actually see from the top. It was over the Christmas holidays, so for once Kersty and I had Matthew and Hannah along too — a rare thing when everyone's usually busy. We went up anyway, not expecting much. About twenty minutes into the climb we broke through it: blue sky above, and below us a solid white sea of cloud stretching right out over the firth. I've walked a fair few Highland hills. I'd never seen anything quite like that before.

That's the thing about Fyrish nobody quite tells you — you go up for a folly, and you come away remembering the weather. So here's what I'd tell a friend heading up for the first time: what the monument actually is, why it's stuck on top of a hill in Easter Ross, and — because we made the mistake ourselves — why you shouldn't rush the climb.

A Folly Built on Empire and Hunger

The three stone arches up there aren't a ruin, whatever they look like from the road. They're a folly — built on purpose to look unfinished — and they're a copy of a real gate: the Gate of Negapatam, a port on the Indian coast that General Sir Hector Munro of Novar took from the Dutch in a siege in 1781. You'll sometimes hear people say it copies Seringapatam. It doesn't — that was a different siege, years later, and a different ruler entirely. Munro was the local laird, and he had the monument built between about 1782 and 1785, paid for out of the money and pensions he'd earned in India. Locally the story goes he ordered it as work for tenants who'd been cleared off their land and had nothing else — relief back then came only in exchange for labour, starving or not. There's an even better rumour, never proven, that Munro had the stones rolled back down the hill overnight so his workers would have something to carry up again the next morning. Cynical or kind, depending who you ask.

Why He Picked This Hill

Cnoc Fyrish stands about 453 metres above the Cromarty Firth, and Munro chose it for the same reason we all climb it now — you can see the monument from almost anywhere around Alness and Kiltearn, and from the top you can see almost everywhere back. On a clear day it's the whole Cromarty Firth laid out below, the Black Isle beyond it, and Ben Wyvis filling the western skyline, spectacular under snow. What nobody mentions in the official write-ups is what happens on a day like ours — when the firth's under cloud and the hill pokes up into clear air above it. That's a proper Highland trick of the weather, and it's worth going even when the forecast looks like a washout down at sea level.

The Walk Up (Don't Rush It)

The route is the signed Jubilee Path from the free car park off the B9176, a well-made forest track that opens onto heather near the top — call it four miles there and back, with about 270 metres of climbing, and give yourself two to three hours all in. Here's where I'll save you the mistake we made: we set off too fast, because it didn't look that steep from the car park. It is. The path was slippery after the rain, and by the top we were all glad to slow down for the way back. Take it easy on that last stretch especially — the stone steps and loose gravel near the summit are exactly where people go over.

When To Go

Early morning or early evening gets you the best light and the fewest people — the car park fills fast on a fine summer weekend, so aim to be there before ten. Midges are the other summer tax; a breezy day on the open hilltop helps more than repellent does. If you're chasing the cloud-inversion trick we got, a misty, still morning with a clear forecast above is worth the gamble — just make sure it's genuinely low-level haar or fog and not simply a wet-through day. Autumn, with the heather still out and the worst of the midges gone, is my quiet favourite; winter gives you Ben Wyvis under snow, but the hill is exposed, so dress for it properly.

Make a Day of It

It's about forty-five minutes to an hour north of Inverness on the A9, so it pairs naturally with the rest of Easter Ross. It's not somewhere we stop every time, but the Storehouse of Foulis is well worth the detour on the way back — their tablet alone makes the case. Black Rock Gorge, just outside Evanton, is a good add-on if the family isn't walked out yet: steep-sided and wooded, a proper contrast to the open hilltop you've just come down from. If you're doing a longer loop, Cromarty and the Black Isle are close enough to fold in too.

A Hill in the News

That last stretch we warned you about — the steep, slippery bit near the top — is exactly what's been giving Fyrish its odd sort of moment lately. It turned up on The Traitors UK in January, used for one of the show's physical challenges, and by all accounts the climb defeated even the fittest contestants. More seriously, there's a live local campaign — Save Fyrish — against a proposed windfarm nearby that residents say would tower over the monument and change the whole character of the hill. It's not resolved as I write this, so it's worth a quick check before you go if the view itself is the reason for your trip.

"It's harder than childbirth."

— Rachel Duffy, The Traitors UK, via BBC News

We didn't get the Cromarty Firth that day, not from below anyway. We got something better: a sea of cloud with the hills around Ben Wyvis poking through it like islands, and a very tired, very happy family at the bottom. Go for the history if you like, go for the folly — but go expecting the hill to surprise you, because it did us.