Nigg is notable amongst other things for the large 1970s KBR oil rig construction site, currently kept on a maintenance basis awaiting decisions on its future, and next door to it, an active oil terminal.
Nigg's Christian history in recent centuries includes a 1739 revival and 1756 secession from the Church of Scotland over the imposition of an unsuitable minister, which led to a rare rural Highland branch of the Seceders, represented today by Balintore United Free Church. The evangelical minister of the parish of Alness, James Fraser (author of a Treatise on Sanctification) owned an estate at Pitcalzean, Nigg, and supported the seceding people of the parish of Nigg.
On to our walk:
First we visited Nigg Old Church (link to website created by the trust that looks after it), a 17th century T-shaped church on a site which was likely a place of Christian worship for some 1200 years.
This was the pretty view facing us as we entered the church - the pulpit is round to the left on the same wall as the entrance door.
Benjamin and Abigail in the pulpit:
The picture below shows pews facing the pulpit. Not only were there the three wings of pews shown in the photos, but also some lofts (galleries) for the wealthy which have now been walled off.
None of the three church buildings around the village are in regular use for worship nowadays - the nearest Church of Scotland in weekly use being the historic Fearn Abbey, while the nearby Seaboard Villages (Hilton/Balintore/Shandwick) have three other evangelical Presbyterian churches which saw quite a number of people come to faith in the later 20th century since I lived there as a child. Nigg itself seems rather depopulated compared to what it would have been when the agriculture of the surrounding prosperous farm land was done by hand. Hugh Mackenzie, one of the elders in our church and a local farmer, remembers the contrast he noticed when he started farming on the Fearn peninsula in the 1960s (?), between how he was working one of his own fields on his own with mechanisation and the numerous labourers in a neighbouring farm field which was still being worked the old way.
In a side room underneath one of the old lofts is the current home of the Nigg Pictish stone (one of several comparable stones within 15 miles). Thought to be from the eighth century, it has religious designs apparently about the 3rd/4th century Egyptian hermit monks Paul and Anthony, and about the Biblical King David.
This gravestone in the churchyard was one amongst several that caught the children's eye:
Looking down from the side of the church onto the Bishop's Walk, which was where we went next:
The wild cherry tree here was labelled, as are a good number of other trees of different species in the wood, some native, some long established in Britain, and some brought from British colonies:
After we got through the wood we came to the seaside of Nigg Bay. This discarded piece of what seemed to me to be old carved sandstone (from where?) interested the children:
Benjamin walking along the shore, composed of sand, stones, and ....
cockle shells!
We meant to go back by a different path, but didn't find it, so we walked cautiously back along the side of the road and back to the church along the Bishop's Walk, stopping for a snack on a seat by a pond. And yes, they were tired!
