A wooden boardwalk leads across moorland to a large chambered cairn built of stacked stone, forest lining the horizon.

Caithness

Grey Cairns of Camster

Two Neolithic chambered tombs, more than 5,000 years old, on a lonely moor in the Flow Country of Caithness, reached by a boardwalk; you can go inside.

Welcome

On a lonely road across the moor north of Lybster, in the great open bog of the Flow Country, two grey mounds of stacked stone rise from the heather.

The Grey Cairns of Camster are Neolithic tombs, built more than five thousand years ago, and among the oldest stone monuments in Scotland.

There are two of them. The long cairn stretches out along the moor with two chambers inside, and the round cairn beside it holds a single chamber of three compartments. Their remoteness has kept them safe from the plough, and though they were rebuilt in modern times, they look much as they would have done to the people who raised them.

A boardwalk leads across the wet ground from the road. The best part is going in: stoop, or crawl, down the low stone passages into the chambers, where the people of Caithness laid their dead. Bring a torch.

Before you go

Open all year, in the care of Historic Environment Scotland.

A boardwalk crosses the moor from the road; the passages are low and you crawl in.

Where: The moor road north of Lybster.
Age: More than 5,000 years.
Inside: Low passages to the chambers.

Did you know

A long chambered cairn of stacked stone rises from open moorland, a narrow path leading to its low entrance.

Did you know

More than 5,000 years.

The Camster cairns were built more than 5,000 years ago.

A large chambered cairn built of stacked stone rises from a grassy moor, a low entrance passage and dry-stone wall at its base.

Did you know

Step inside.

You can go inside the chambers of both cairns.

Ben Lerwill

From our guide to Caithness

Few prehistoric remains are so imposing as this pair of Neolithic tombs, lying on a lonely moor and restored to show the scale and craftsmanship of the 5,000-year-old originals. Both structures – there’s a long cairn and a round cairn – have chambers and compartments inside, standing testament to customs long gone.

Graeme Johncock

The hole in the top of the round Camster Cairn was made after a Victorian woman got stuck inside and needed to be hoisted out.

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