Ambitious plans have been unveiled to transform an overgrown and forgotten rail line into a new £750,000 link between Dingwall and Strathpeffer.
Local residents have been trying for decades to find a safe and easy route between the two communities that can be used by visitors, walkers, school-children and cyclists.
Now an action group called The Peffery Way Association has been established to try to finally turn the dream into a reality.
They are focussing the plans on an old rail line to a station at Strathpeffer, which closed in 1964 and now houses the Highland Museum of Childhood, shops and a cafe.
The association has lodged initial planning applications for the project, and intends to submit detailed proposals to the local authority next month.
Miles Davis, the chairman of the group, said: “A lot of local people have been wanting to get a safe way from Dingwall to Strathpeffer for about 30 years.
“You can’t use the road. It’s a very fast road and there’s a dangerous bridge. You can’t walk it and even cycling is difficult.
“Last year, a whole bunch of people, about 60 of us, walked down the rail line. It was fairly overgrown, like a jungle, but it was then that a lightbulb went on in our heads.
“It would be extending a network of safe ways to get people around. We really are in the early phases.”
The group needs to secure planning permission so it can accelerate a major fundraising effort, with £5,000 raised out of a £750,000 target to date.
It is hoped that the path, stretching nearly four miles, could be completed in 2018.
Separate plans exist to lay 0.8miles of track and erect a locomotive shed, platform, car park, canteen and toilets on part of the old rail line.
It is understood the both applicants believe the two schemes can sit alongside each other.
