My Favourite Place, by author Vee Walker: Kirkmichael, Black Isle
Where is it?
I love to visit the restored medieval chapel of Kirkmichael, near Newhall Point, on the Black Isle. It’s in the parish of Resolis, which means “slope of gold”.
A wee part-limewashed place, it gazes stolidly eastwards up the Cromarty Firth, towards the two Sutor headlands. These protect a sheltered natural harbour, now dotted with oil rig platforms under maintenance and home to the RSPB’s Udale Bay reserve, a great place to spot migrant birds.
Why do you go there?
Kirkmichael is quiet and dramatically peaceful. Skylarks and skeins of geese overhead, many local generations now crumbled into the earth beneath my feet. It grounds me, literally.
How often do you go?
As often as I can, and if ever I am passing.
How did you discover it?
I grew up in Resolis where my mother, a local teacher, began to record some extraordinary early gravestones at Old Cullicudden. “Come and see,” she’d say. “I’ve found one with a huge sword on it!” Once she had noted a description, she would roll back the soft green blanket of turf, which was important protection.
Kirkmichael itself was - then - abandoned and dismal, an increasingly vandalised and dangerous structure with half a roof, tree-height nettles and tons of pigeon guano. When the Kirkmichael Trust was founded, led by the indomitable Dr Jim Mackay, my mother gave him her Old Cullicudden notebook.
What began as “just” a building restoration programme soon became a rescue project for vulnerable local pre-Reformation tombstones, now displayed around the walls of the restored nave. My favourite is the biggest asymmetrical double wheel cross (once broken, now mended) from Old Cullicudden.
Kirkmichael is a model of best practice in terms of community-led building restoration.
What’s your favourite memory?
The wet opening day in April 2017, after a gruelling three-year Lottery project, when soggy but gleeful children from Newhall Primary sang a song Walter the Heron, which they composed with Ewan MacVicar, to HRH the Duke of Gloucester.
Who do you take?
I often take guests. The Reformation of 1560 makes more sense standing in what began as a pre-Reformation building.
What do you take?
Photographs. It’s a photogenic place. You can see many here, as well as some of the stories behind the stones, on the website kirkmichael.info
What do you leave behind?
A donation to help with maintenance costs. Kirkmichael is open free in daylight hours. Early Catholic pilgrims would have left offerings here too, in the days when they travelled through Kirkmichael en route to the shrine of St Duthac in Tain from the mighty Chanonry of Ross in Fortrose and Elgin Cathedral.
Sum it up in a few words.
Deep (in all senses), joyful, peaceful, uplifting, serene.
What other travel spot is on your wish list?
I have a yen to swim in the River Conon again, as I did when I was wee.
Nice Dog by Vee Walker is shortlisted for the 2024 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University and included in an anthology (Comma Press, £8.99)
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