Berriedale
Berriedale is a small estate town on the north east shore of Caithness, Scotland, on the A9 roadway between Helmsdale as well as Lybster, near the border in between Caithness and Sutherland. It is sheltered from the North Sea. The town has a parish church in the Church of Scotland. Just south of Berriedale, en route to the north, the A9 passes the Berriedale Braes, a steep drop in the landscape (brae is a Scots word for hillside, a borrowing of the Scottish Gaelic bràighe). The roadway drops down considerably (13% over 1,3 km) to link a river, prior to increasing again (13% over 1,3 km), with a variety of sharp bends in the road-- although a few of the hairpin bends and also various other neighboring gradients have been reduced recently. The impracticality (and expense) of linking the Berriedale Braes avoided the building of the Inverness-Wick Far North Line along the east coast of Caithness; instead the railway runs inland via the Flow Country. Berriedale lies at the end of the eighth stage of the coastal John o' Groats Trail.
