B9161

Route

Heading away from the A9

The B9161 is a short but useful link from the A9 just north of Inverness to Munlochy on the A832, and so on to Fortrose and Cromarty. It therefore provides a shorter, quicker route than by taking the A9 up to the Tore Roundabout and doubling back along the A832. The historic reason why this is a B road instead of the A832 (or another A road) is that up until the opening of the Kessock Bridge, the Kessock Ferry was not the easiest means of crossing to Inverness, and following the A832 westwards to come around via Beauly was a common journey. Despite being strip widened around the end of the 1980s, it remains a lower quality road that the A832, as well as having the flat junction with the A9 dual carriageway. There is therefore some logic in the A-road route remaining that by the safer Tore roundabout, although probably few drivers take that longer option.

The route starts, therefore, in Munlochy at a skewed crossroads on the A832 at the east end of the village and heads south west along the main street, Millbank Road. After briefly turning southwards past the church, and winding over the small Littlemill Bridge, the route swings back to the south west and follows a series of straights past Bogallan and down to the A9. Immediately before reaching the dual carriageway, a staggered crossroads is where the B9162 used to arrive from the north, and the B9161 turned to the left into North Kessock, and so the ferry. Munlochy Junction with the A9 includes a gap in the central reservation for traffic turning right off the A9, which can lead to long queues at busy times. Since 2022 it has not been possible to turn right onto the A9.

Inverness

Signage in Inverness is a little confused, with the sign on the A82 Friars Bridge approach to the Shore Street Roundabout showing the B9161 heading into Inverness along Chapel Street, although it only gets as far as the B862 Friars' Lane. In the other direction of the A82, coming from the Longman, Chapel Street is signed as B865. Some maps also give Chapel Street the B9161 number, and the Highland Council themselves don't seem to be too sure. Common sense suggests that the street should be the B865, for which signage can now be found. However, for a time it may have been a slightly lost stub, reminding us of the historical route of the road into the city centre.

History

The B9161 once reached Inverness

Before the A9 was extended north in 1935, everything north of Inverness was in Zone 8, so the B9161 was originally the B861. However, that is not the full story, as prior to 1935 the B861 crossed the Kessock Ferry to pass through Inverness, continuing south along its current route. This means that the modern B9161 and B861 were once part of a continuous route.

From Munlochy Junction, the old route can be followed past the houses at Croftnacreich. It is then lost under the A9, but reappears at North Kessock Junction and drops down through the village to the old ferry slipway on Oakleigh Road. Across the ferry, the route passed through South Kessock on Kessock Road and Thornbush Road and then entered Inverness across the Waterloo Bridge on Grant Street. It then ran along Chapel Street (as above) and Academy Street to reach the A9, which ran along Eastgate and the High Street. In 1935 the road to the north became the B9161, with the B861 continuing to head south, as now, on Castle Street. This situation persisted until the Kessock Bridge was opened, and the A9 rerouted across it, so replacing part of the southern section of the B9161.

However, as noted above, the story within Inverness is less clear. An OS 1:10000 Inverness town plan of 1986 shows Chapel Street as B9161, then multiplexing with B9146 across Waterloo Bridge and along Grant Street, before re-emerging as the route to South Kessock Pier and the former ferry. At that time the A82 formed a one-way circuit round the town centre (locally known as the Magic Roundabout) so Academy Street was by then part of the A82 and no longer the B9161. The section to the ferry must have been declassified soon after that as the 1988 Landranger map no longer shows it as a B road north of Grant Street. Despite the conflicting signs, it is likely that Chapel Street remained a stub of B9161 until becoming part of B865 after the current route of the A82 was completed and Academy Street reverted to two-way.