Qualla: Alness https://qualla.com/alness en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/k/b/alness-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Alness https://qualla.com/alness Alness: Introduction https://qualla.com/alness/ Photo credit Richard Dorrell, CC BY-SA 2.0. For most of the 1990s and into the 2000s, Alness kept winning Britain in Bloom. That sounds like a small thing until you understand what flower competitions were actually doing for the town. The judges came and looked, and the awards came back, and the housing estates won separate awards of their own, and over the course of a decade a former Highland staging post had reinvented itself as somewhere that took its own appearance seriously. In 2018 the same instinct paid off again, when Alness was named Scottish champion at the Great British High Street Awards.

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Image: Richard Dorrell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/k/b/alness-wp/gfkb-alness-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Alness: The Town on the River Averon https://qualla.com/alness/ Photo credit Stephen McKay, CC BY-SA 2.0. Alness sits on Easter Ross at the mouth of the River Averon, which runs through it and feeds the Cromarty Firth. Invergordon is three miles east, Evanton four miles southwest, and Inverness about twenty miles south. The 2011 census put the parish population at 5,310, but the High...

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Image: Stephen McKay | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/k/b/alness-wp/gfkb-alness-the-town-on-the-river-averon.mp3 0:06 2 full Alness: The Skirmish and the Folly https://qualla.com/alness/ Photo credit Simon Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. In September 1715, the Jacobite rising of that autumn brushed through Alness in a skirmish that pitted MacKenzies and MacDonalds under the Earl of Seaforth against pro-government Munros, Rosses, and MacKays under the Earl of Sutherland. The Jacobites drove their opponents over th...

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Image: Simon Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/k/b/alness-wp/gfkb-alness-the-skirmish-and-the-folly.mp3 0:06 3 full Alness: Two Distilleries https://qualla.com/alness/ Photo credit Derek Spence, CC BY-SA 2.0. Whisky has been part of Alness for two centuries. Dalmore distillery, on the firth shore, dates from 1839 and is now owned by Whyte and Mackay, which in turn is owned by the Philippines-based Emperador Inc. Its old single malts have made headlines for the prices they fetch at auc...

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Image: Derek Spence | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/k/b/alness-wp/gfkb-alness-two-distilleries.mp3 0:06 4 full Alness: The Catalinas and the Sunderlands https://qualla.com/alness/ Photo credit Peter Gamble, CC BY-SA 2.0. During the Second World War, Alness was home to RAF Alness, a major training and operational base for Catalina amphibians and Sunderland seaplanes. The base extended from Invergordon to Alness Point - now an industrial estate - and trained the crews who flew long-range maritime p...

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Image: Peter Gamble | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/k/b/alness-wp/gfkb-alness-the-catalinas-and-the-sunderlands.mp3 0:06 5 full