Dame Ellen to open city's marina

Dame Ellen has family connections to the Highlands

Round-the-world solo yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur is to officially open Inverness's revamped harbour and new marina.

She is to perform the ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday morning.

In 2001 she became the youngest person and fastest woman to sail around the world alone.

Costing £9m and six years in the planning, the expanded harbour was built in part from the dredged up muddy bottom of the River Ness.

In 2006, Dame Ellen was made a Freeman of Skye and Lochalsh.

Her great, great grandfather was brought up at Luib on the Isle of Skye, but left in the 1880s to move to Derbyshire.

During a ceremony in Portree, she said the island was a place "very close" to her heart.