Durran

Explorer Tom Castlehill Heritage Centre has a good trick: it makes a paving stone seem like the start of an adventure. In Castletown on the Caithness coast, old farm buildings tell how local flagstone travelled far beyond this village, while the harbour and working lives behind it become much more interesting than any slab beneath your feet. James Traill developed the Castlehill flagstone works in the 1790s, with a purpose-built harbour to ship the hard-wearing stone. Castletown grew to house workers in the early 1800s. The centre follows that story through later chapters including the wartime airfield and the Norfrost freezer business. I would have given the flagstones passports, but the export ledgers were probably quite enough paperwork. Castletown Heritage Society runs the centre, with exhibitions on local history, natural life and social history. Workshops sometimes bring traditional skills into the building as living practice. This is a village telling its own story, not a distant hall borrowing a few objects. The site is in renovated eighteenth-century farm buildings and the society says the centre is accessible, with a wheelchair available on request. Find it on Harbour Road, Castletown, six miles east of Thurso. Published public hours are Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with other visits by arrangement and a short holiday closure; check the society's current page before travelling. Leave time for the harbour as well. Those quiet stones have seen more of the world than most of us.