Anyone enjoying a leisurely stroll round Inverness city centre streets and riverside might notice a selection of random and quirky messages and sayings inscribed on the pavement slabs.

Your next thought might be: "What's that all about."

Back in 2007, Inverness Streetscape programme was well under way - a £4.573m construction contract to revitalise the city centre.

It included new hard landscaping including new pavements, stone seating and bollards, and Streetscape Public Art Steering Group was formed to add interest with public art.

Portuguese specialist paving layers were brought over for some of the work.

This group took on local art partnership DUFI, with artists Fin Macrae and Al MacInnes.

They were commissioned to develop a series of Street Texts engraved into the paving in a contemporary style. There are also some non verbal inlays such as brass leaves and fish.

A series of 25 or 30 of these were sculpted throughout the project area. mostly based on the theme of water which is intrinsic to Inverness with the River Ness and the Caledonian Canal nearby.

Fin and Al asked around 25 local people to contribute quotes and their boot prints on cardboard which were buried under several new flagstones which would carry the sculpted messages.

Texts were also gathered from local poets, musicians and writers, plus extracts from historical documents and town records.

The first stones were laid in Church Lane between the now late lamented Old High Church and the Free North Church, and include the scripture quote from the Song of Solomon: "Many waters cannot quench love nor can rivers wash it away."

Incidentally because of the Song of Solomon's sexual and marital content, some Jews did not allow it to be read until men were adults and some Christians did not allow its reading at all.

Lead artist and supervisor on the project was Matt Baker, who was also responsible for finding Three Virtues that best describe Inverness in the 21st century.

After involving church and community groups, Perseverance, Open-heartedness and Insight were chosen, and they are inscribed on the stones around the three living birch trees that make the Church Street entrance artwork - known as the Three Virtues.

The award winning River Ness flood alleviation scheme completed in 2015 became involved in art installation as well, and flood walls also carry messages and small art works are at various spots on the banks.

Costs of Inverness Streetscape were met by the Scottish Executive’s Cities Growth Fund and Public Transport Fund, Inverness Common Good Fund, The Highland Council and HIE Inverness & East Highland.

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A selection of Street Texts:

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

Snow Angel.

Save the museum for a rainy day - the main attraction in Inverness is a leisurely stroll along the river to the Ness Islands.

Fog Lights

There are also Gaelic texts at two entrances to the Victorian Market.

It seems Inverness had a thing about carving messages in the town centre, as a wall opposite the front door of the Town House has several biblical texts sculpted on the stone facade.

There is a question mark over when or why these words were painstakingly put on the wall.

One story is that new councillors were asked after civic receptions to read these texts whilst standing at the Town House door as a test of sobriety.

There is also a story that the texts were carved at the request of Provost John MacKenzie around 1870, with the aim of impressing on the councillors attending meetings that both their duties should be carried out with God firmly in mind.

Another version is that the building on which the texts are carved was used as a meeting place by a Christian Brethren congregation in the mid to late 20th century, and that they used to hold open air meetings outside the town house.

The texts were painted in around 1996 to make them more distinctive after a campaign by the local Civic Trust with funding from Inverness and Nairn Enterprise.

One text from Hab reads: "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that putteth the bottle to him and makest him drunken also."

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