Caithness Courier headlines for July 19, 2017


THE civic leader of Caithness is "horrified" after learning of a fire at a school and community leisure complex which has been open for less than three months. Emergency services rushed to Wick High community campus on Friday night after the outbreak, within the cavity wall of its sauna.


THOUSANDS of pieces of Lego have been used, to create a replica of the type of broch which was used by Iron Age communities in Caithness more than 25000 years ago. Lego-building specialists, Brick to the Past, has unveiled their construction in Caithness Horizons visitor centre in Thurso to help Caithness Broch Project promote the area's history.


MORE than 1600 people in Caithness have required hospital treatment for alcohol abuse over the past five years and a further 228 for drugs misuse over the same period. The statistics show, there were nine alcohol-related deaths among the 236 who were admitted to hospital and the 92 who attended the accident and emergency department.


A CAITHNESS woman, who left the far north 18 years ago, returned home to take part in a trip on the increasingly popular North Coast 500 route. Carolyn Toshney, nee Pierpont move to Aberdeen in 1999 and works as a health and safety advisor in the oil industry. A friend offered her the chance to take part in the event and she agreed.


CHARGING drivers for illegal parking has been a "massive burden" on Highland Council as it battles to pay wardens' wages and claw back half a million pounds spent setting up the enforcement system, a senior councillor has said.


ONE- year-old Jenson Gunn was riding high on Saturday after he landed back-to-back supreme livestock show titles - a feat which eludes all but a very few farmers during a life time's exhibiting. Young Jenson is too young to appreciate the achievement but he was the centre of the family's celebrations after a Simmental heifer from the family holding at Mavsey, Lybster, was picked out as the Champion of Champions at the Caithness County Show in Wick.


ARMY cadets from Caithness and north Sutherland have just returned from a World War One battlefield tour in France, writes Gordon Calder. Thirty members of the 1st Battalion the Highlanders toured battlegrounds and visited cemeteries and memorials to the soldiers who took part in the Somme offensive


AS a way of saying thank you to a hospital for the care a woman received in her final days, a far north family has raised £7000 to go towards helping staff deliver palliative care to others.


FIFTY-Five per cent of Scottish adults would be "less likely" to visit scenic areas if they have commercial wind farms and electricity transmission lines, a survey has revealed. The survey - conducted by YouGov on behalf of conservation charity the John Muir Trust - reveals 55 per cent of adults are "less likely" to visit scenic areas if they contain large-scale infrastructure like commercial wind farms electricity transmission and super-quarries.