Fyrish Monument from the Boath road

The monument on Cnoc Fyrish, above Evanton and Alness in Easter Ross, is a row of arches and towers that can be seen from most of the A9 along the Cromarty Firth, and it is a folly with an unusually exact story. Sir Hector Munro of Novar, the local laird and the general who took the port of Negapatam from the Dutch in 1781, had it built in 1782, or 1783 by Walkhighlands’ account, as a copy of that town’s gates. It went up during the Clearances, when relief for the destitute was given only in exchange for work, and the story told locally is that Munro had the stones rolled back down the hill so the labour, and the pay, would last longer.

The Jubilee Path starts at a small purpose-built car park on the minor road to Boath, at NH 627714, and is signed from the gate. It undulates through the forest, crosses a forestry track, drops a flight of stone steps to a footbridge over a burn and climbs the far side, then leaves the trees for open moorland, with a small lochan beside the path and a signed track on the right that makes an alternative return. The monument is about half a kilometre beyond that crossroads. Walkhighlands describes the path as good throughout, with a fair amount of up and down, and Ordnance Survey Explorer 438 covers it. Bus and train reach Alness, and starting from there adds about 2km each way on foot.

At around 6km and 292m of ascent, allow two to two and a half hours. The reward is the whole sweep of the Cromarty Firth, from the North Sea inland to Ben Wyvis, and the monument itself, three central arches and four flanking towers, is larger close up than it looks from the road. It suits a family or a first afternoon in Easter Ross, and anyone based on the Invergordon or Alness side of the firth who wants a climb without a mountain’s commitment. It does not suit a walker with small children who is counting on level ground, because the path climbs and drops repeatedly before it climbs for good, and it is not a summit day in any sense a hillwalker would use the phrase. Ben Wyvis, whose long back fills the western end of the view, is the Munro for the day the weather holds.