The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Thurso, Caithness*

Thurso, Caithness Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• My house I can close the door from the inside and I can pretend I am elseware
• Harald's Tower - why don't they open it up to the public - complete with skulls, etc? Great fun for those of a macabre disposition.
• It has to be that boarded up hut next to the swings on Victoria walk.
• The gate house at the Castle.
• The BT building because they pay me to go there and my 2 different houses
• Fishmarket
• Harald's Tower.
• NEWMARKET BAR
• My favourite Thurso building has to be the one held up by scaffolders poles on Traill Street. These are stopping the end of it falling down and have been there for..oh.. ....a year or two.
• Thurso Castle without a doubt.

Demolish It Now Building

• Anything in Wick
• The NewMarket bar (with the owner inside it)
• the whole music shop/ whatsits complex thing. it has a mural on the wall for goodness sake.
• The nightclub in Thurso, Top Joes, Central Hotel, Sandra's Snack Bar. (Leave the owners inside the place while it is getting demolished)
• The new Weigh Inn is the most hideous building in Scotland. It is built from orange and brown lego, and ruins one of the most beautiful views in Thurso. Not only is it not in keeping with local "design", but it looks like a reject from a nursery school drawing competition. The main question which should be on everyones' mind is why it ever got planning permission! Do us a favour and stick some semtex under it.
• Thurso Co-op
• rian (he's a boy with a girls spelling for his name) mcgregors house. Preferably with him in it at the time.
• Park Hotel - give it a few years and it'll demolish itself
• Tollemache House - well, just that horrendous mural. Was someone actually paid for that pish? Dowpy Dan on acid could have done a better job. Someone said it was a listed building - what list? The list of buildings with crap psychedelic doodles on the side?
• TOP JOES
• The co-op as it is crap.
• The house in Princes Street with the scaffolding holding it up.
• The old brewery behind the Co-Op supermarket.
• The College
• Many of the local buildings were the responsibility of a local architects firm called Sinclair MacDonald, who have been going now for over 100 years. The stuff they did in the60's is dotted about everywhere, and would be offensive to most local people if they actually bothered to look above eye level.Pull it all down. Hideous carbuncles.
• Thurso Castle without a doubt(deja-vu??)

The Best Things

• Music shop and fit birds
• Nothing beats a Johnsons Peh and Jap cake (dont get japs where I live now :-(, last time i was up there I bought the whole lot!)... is old Ma still about?
• it has really beautiful senery, and (most) of the locals, are really friendly!
• the beach, nice senery, (mostly)nice people. good community
• Not being there
• The loose women, fishing, shooting.
• The recent opening of Lidals supermarket for cheap drink
• Cheap everything.
• Thurso College for attracting all of those slappers from the Highland's rural community.
• The sea, the cliffs, the wide open spaces, the wonderful pace of life, the fact that the police have nothing better to do than catch speeding motorists!
• Johnsons the bakers 3.00am Fri night/Sat morning. Crawl from Skinandis and get hot pies at the back door.
• The best thing about Thurso is without doubt the filthy girls you get there. Fill a bint with voddie & Coke and she'll perform even the most sorded acts.
• There is nothing wrong with the glebe. I used to live there and the only reason it is shite now is because the LUG's lived there
• Leaving the hellhole at 17 and never, ever coming back, not even to be buried
• What can I say - Thurso is the best place in the world. Don't knock it. Relatively safe - if only they would stop offering housing to antisocial families from the rest of the country. We're used to the psychos we've got - don't want injections of fresh "talent" from doon sooth.
• THE SURF AT THURSO EAST EXCELLENT FOR SURFING AND JETSKI
• newmarket bar for a good crack & excellent beer
• Summer and the weekends.
• The people, the crack, the predominant fresh air. For those interested in motorcycles the great roads and the Caithness Classic Motorcycle Club.
• There is a great comedy value to the town. Everywhere you go there is something to make you laugh. The pubs are good enough to get drunk in, and there are plenty of them.
• The peace and tranquillity mixed with the sex and drugs.
• The road south.
• Cheapest taxis in UK.
• Lowest Chest Cancer rates in UK.
• Thurso and its surrounding roads has to be the best place in the UK to drive very fast. Great roads with very little traffic, few cops and everyone seems to drive flat out.
• The best thing is the spectacular coastline.
• Best thing used to be the Station Bar, Princes Street, when excellent real ale was served by two elderly gentlemen in white coats. Still worth a visit to see the collection of old brewery mirrors.
• Thurso has one of the best reef breaks in Europe for Surfing and well worth a mention. There are a lot of good beaches and reef breaks along the North cost to Sandwood Bay.

The Worst Things

• Fit birds only go for guys with cars
• The poos in the water at the beach.... dont know if its still the same now but we all had to swim with our mouths shut! yuk!!
• it can be exspensive, and cold!
• the pricks, the area(top of scotland!!)
• The druggies who go in the Newmarket...lock up your children
• Being there
• the judiciary system. me tarzan. you jane. you bug me. me smack you up.
• The loose women, fishing in the rain all the time and the Northen Police.
• Power crazed self important council workers.
• The Holburn Bar, the place for fighting and vomit.
• It's is so far from anywhere else!
• The impending collapse of Princes St. -including the Station Hotel Bar-due either to 40 years worth of heavy trucks bound to and from Dounereay or to an ill advised Hydro Electric cable laying. Either way, just look at the lintels on the houses, especially around Davidson's Lane.
• Shops which close at lunchtime and think 'late opening' means staying open until 5.30pm Everyone knows who you are No decent drugs - only magic mushrooms Leukemia cluster Mention 'nuclear power' and the locals start to froth at the mouth Local men think 'D'you want to go halfers on a bastard' is a sophisticated chat-up line
• The road south (or the road to Week).
• TOP JOES DRINKERS
• The people who are always against any new developements, no matter where or what anyone wants to build or regardless of how many jobs the developement would provide.
• Winter and the rest of the week.
• Horizontal rain and too many crinkly bus trips to the town. All the young locals who drive round and round and round the town all night - get a life!
• Same faces in the same places. The countryside around Thurso is totally flat and trees do not really exist, making it a bit boring. There is really nothing to do or see in Thurso if you don't drink, and if you do visit the local pubs you are constantly on your guard trying to avoid local hardmen, who are in abundance. To be honest, Thurso is a stop over for Orkney,and that is all it will ever be unless something radical happens.
• The sex and the drugs mixed with peace and tranquility
• Living there for eighteen years. It is a hellhole.
• Worst. Cops have nothing better to do than go for motoring offences.
• The worst is the distance from almost anywhere.
• The horizontal rain in the winter (and the rest of the year)

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Last updated: 2008-06-11