Prince Charles took his tour of the north a bit closer to “home” yesterday by visiting a courtroom in its 150th year and a new factory which harvests seaweed from local beaches.
The Duke of Rothesay, as he is known in Scotland, started the morning by meeting staff at Wick Sheriff Court in Caithness, the county so beloved by his grandmother, as well as local solicitors and honorary sheriffs, as he walked around the building.
He later met employees of the New Wave Foods business who hand-pick seaweed locally, taking no more than 20% of the biomass on site to ensure the practice is sustainable.
At the end of his factory tour the Duke travelled north to his residence at Castle of Mey, where he walked down to Mey beach to help some employees hand-pick the plant down on the foreshore.
Peter Elbourne, operations director of New Wave Foods, said: “The far north of Scotland is blessed with cool, clean water that is ideal for high quality seaweed. Sustainability is central to what we do; stocks are carefully managed and our harvesters are trained to cut seaweed to allow regrowth. Getting to where we are today has required a lot of hard work and we’re delighted to be able to show HRH The Prince of Wales our operations.”
Operations manager Thomas McGee said that the factory currently employs five staff, adding: “There is limited access for jobs in this area and this is an avenue that may create more opportunities for local people, especially as we are now very close to producing our own products”.
Yesterday morning the Duke was escorted around Wick Sheriff Court by Sheriff Andrew Berry to learn how it operates.
Sheriff Berry, who has presided at the court for nearly 10 years and also sits at Kirkwall, said: “It’s an opportunity for anyone here today to see the input from the sheriff clerks, the procurator fiscal, police, social workers and honorary sheriffs – people in the community who can deal with certain matters.
“This is a big geographical area and it’s very important we have access to justice for anyone in the community, so that people who have a civil claim of a fairly straightforward nature can come along and deal with it easily. On the other end of the scale we deal with serious criminal charges sitting with a jury of 15 people”.