I visited the world's shortest street in Scotland - the only business on it is so proud to be there

Measuring roughly the length of a pool table, the world’s shortest street takes up a wee spot in the corner of the north of Scotland.

A hop, skip and a jump and you’re already finished walking down Ebenezer Place in Wick, Caithness.

The tiny street measures 6ft 9ins and spans the width of the entrance to No.1 Bistro, which is part of Mackays Hotel, the only business there is room for.

Murray Lamont, owner of Mackays Hotel in Wick, which sits on the shortest street in the world: Ebenezer Place | Katharine Hay

Chatting over a coffee with owner Murray Lamont, he beamed when I asked him to tell me about the world-famous thoroughfare, which has its own postal address.

To this day, almost 20 years after the town clinched the global title in 2006, enthusiasm for the location continues.

The street measures 6ft 9in, and only has one door on it, which is the entrance to No.1 Bistro which forms part of the hotel | Katharine Hay

“Look behind you,” Mr Lamont said, pointing to the doorway, the only doorway on the street.

“Every few minutes we see people standing in there taking a photo, all day and into the night.

“It’s still a hugely popular place for visitors to come to.”

You can sign up to the Hay’s Way newsletter for more stories like this here.

The street was awarded its global status in 2006 | Katharine Hay

Mr Lamont’s family will be celebrating 70 years next year since they took over the hotel in 1955.

He told me there used to be a webcam in the corner that people could use. In the days before video calling, the visitors would tell relatives abroad to look at the webcam link online to see them standing in the world’s shortest street.

Standing next to the world's shortest street | Katharine Hay

Staff at the hotel said people still book a room for a night or a table for lunch in the bistro especially to make an occasion out of visiting the spot with international status.

The world title came about after Mr Lamont put a bid in, supplying all the right documentation to prove the size and validity of the street, which is comfortably shorter than the world’s tallest person.

Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of the Guinness Book of World Records at the time of the award, apparently battled through storms on a trip up from London that took him 50 hours just to see the street himself. Similarly, it has taken me about 170 days through several storms to get to Wick since setting off on Hay’s Way back in March. Three strides down Ebenezer Place and that was it.

Despite its stunted size, the street’s history goes back more than 100 years.

The hotel was built in 1883 by Alexander Sinclair, whose family owned land in Caithness. The council at the time deemed the short edge of the hotel as a new street, and instructed Mr Sinclair to name it. Ebenezer Place then appeared in the town’s records from 1887. Mr Lamont said when visitors first see the name Ebenezer, they think of the Charles Dickens character Ebenezer Scrooge, from A Christmas Carol.

Not entirely sure what inspired the name for the landowner, Mr Lamont said Mr Sinclair was a religious man, and Ebenezer is a biblical name and has Hebrew origins meaning "stone of the help".

“The word can mean kind, caring, and looking after you, which is what we like to do at Mackays,” he said.

The building has always been a hotel, but it has had a string of different names before it became Mackays. It also had a dry spell when, under the Temperance (Scotland) Act of 1913, which was a UK parliament act that allowed voters in small areas of Scotland to decide whether to prohibit alcohol in their area, the people of Wick decided to stop drinking.

Between 1922, when the residents cast their votes, and 1947, the town was officially boozeless with no alcohol licences permitted within the Royal Burgh.

The Highland street joins a handful of other Guinness Book of World Record holders in Scotland. These include The Star Hotel in Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway, for being the narrowest hotel in the world; Double Diamond, a Texel sheep that sold in Lanark for a whopping £367,500 making him the most expensive sheep; and the largest haggis, made in North Berwick at Fenton’s Barn, and which measured 2.8 metres in length, 0.96 metres wide, 0.65 metres in height and 1,010kg in weight.