Portsoy, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 25 August 2024 by Katrina

Portsoy in Aberdeenshire was one of the many places that we visited a few weeks ago when we drove north to Aberdeenshire for a few days. The harbour dates back to 1692 and the photos wouldn’t really do it justice, it’s a series of small harbours interlinked. It means that there are safe areas for children to play in with quite shallow water, when the tide is out anyway. When we were there it was crowded with kids having great fun, the water would have been relatively warm too. So I wasn’t able to take photos of those parts because of all the people there.

The harbour has been used in various TV and films, such as Peaky Blinders, Whisky Galore! and various BBC period dramas, as well as in a Tennents lager advert.

The photo below is of the grass at the edge of the harbour, as you can see there’s a modern sculpture of a dolphin there.

I love just about any kind of ruin and this window is just about all that remains of a cottage above the harbour, presumably the weather played havoc with the rest of it over the years.

Portsoy is apparently famous for the marble which used to be mined there, there’s a marble shop there where you can buy various sorts of marble and carved stones. Portsoy marble was used in the Palace of Versailles, the marble is really red and green serpentine. It’s a lovely wee place, I would visit it again, if we are ever in that area again.

Blackness Castle, West Lothian

Posted on 11 September 2023 by Katrina

Blackness Castle sticks out into the River Forth, as you can see, it was apparently designed to look like a ship. You actually have to walk over a wee drawbridge to get on to this wooden walkway.

It’s a couple of weeks since we visited Blackness Castle, it’s not far from Bo’ness in West Lothian, it might be in Falkirk District now, they keep changing things! It’s one of the many places that was used as a location for Outlander, they had to cover the metal handrails with wooden panelling. It was also used in the filming of The Bruce, Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, Starz (?) Doomsday and Ivanhoe. Blackness was built in the 15th century.

Anyway, it’s not that far from where we live and possibly for that reason we just didn’t get around to visiting it until years after reading about the castle. For some reason I didn’t think it would be a very interesting castle – but it was. As usual there are a lot of spiral staircases involved.

It’s a long way up to the top.

In the distance you can just see the Forth Bridges below. As ever, if you click on the photos you should be able to see them enlarged. Tomorrow I’ll show some photos of inside the castle.

Wideford Hill Chambered Cairn, Orkney

Posted on 20 July 2022 by Katrina

While we were on Orkney we wanted to visit Wideford Hill Chambered Cairn, it took a bit of finding and when we did find a signpost it pointed up to what was a very stoney and bumpy twisty turny track for what seemed like ages, I feared for our new car! Eventually we reached a wee car park and the signpost there said the cairn was a half mile walk from there. Hmmm, it wasn’t. It might have been half a mile as the crow flies but as we didn’t have wings that was no help to us! It must have been at least two miles on a very dry springy peaty, but at times stoney track, up hill and down dale and all at a slant! I was very impressed that our octogenarian friend managed it all so well – so was she! It was a beautiful day though, it was just a bit worrying that we never seemed to be reaching our destination, but as you can see from the photo below the view was fine.

Below is the information board. Click to enlarge it if you need to.

As you can see there’s a metal cover protecting the tomb, it has to be pushed back to gain entrance. Originally, when this tomb was built over 5,000 years ago the entrance would have been at ground level and you would probably have had to crawl through it.

Then there’s a metal ladder leading down to the floor of the cairn/tomb. Getting over the edge was a bit scary for me as the gap seemed quite big, but Jack just stepped over onto it, I made sure I had something to hang onto until my feet were firmly on a rung!

It’s really a very small chambered tomb, the middle of it anyway, there are three side chambers which are bigger. We took a torch with us and I crawled halfway into one, but I wouldn’t go right in, too scary with all those tons of stone above you! But the bones that used to be in the chambers are long gone, it had been robbed by the time it was excavated in the 1800s. Jack didn’t go in either. There is a torch available in a wee cupboard outside the cairn, if you haven’t brought your own.

On the walk back to the car I took more photos of the surrounding scenery, below is a stitch of three of them. The water you can see is a branch of the North Sea called the Bay of Firth.

Marwick Head, Orkney, Scotland

Posted on 15 June 2022 by Katrina

We wanted to revisit the cliffs at Marwick Head, especially as it was such a stunningly clear and bright day weather-wise. The cliffs are full of nesting seabirds which you should be able to see if you click on the photo to enlarge.

The photo below is of Marwick Bay with the island of Hoy in the background. Unfortunately we didn’t go to Hoy because the museum we wanted to visit was closed for refurbishment. Orkney was very busy during both World Wars as a strategic defence guarding access to the North Atlantic and the Home Fleet’s base in adjacent Scapa Flow.

We were there at the right time for the Thrift flowers though. They bloom all around the cliffs.

As you can see below there’s a massive tower at the top of the cliffs. It’s a memorial to Lord Kitchener, he drowned in the sea just off Marwick Head when the ship he was on – HMS Hampshire – hit a mine during World War 1, in 1916. You can read about it here. He was one of 737 who died when the ship went down. It does seem like some sort of payback for all the young men that he sent to their death via his ‘Your Country Needs You’ posters.

Apparently the next landfall from here is North America!

I turned around and took the photo below from Marwick Head looking inland, just to let you see what the scenery is like. Orkney is definitely different from mainland Scotland, some people love the gentle looking hillocks, and certainly a lot of incomers have moved there from elsewhere but I don’t think I could ever live there for too long as I really miss trees. It’s a strange barren landscape that has no trees. There are a few dotted around in sheltered spots but they are almost all field maples/sycamores, they are probably the only ones that will survive the fierce winds.

There are loads of rabbits in this area, with rabbit holes all over the place, which makes it qute dangerous as you certainly don’t want to catch your foot in one and take a header over the cliff! There are notices around telling you not to feed the rabbits as they are a menace, but there were dogs in the vicinity so they didn’t hang about for long when we were there – hence no bunny photos.

Firth of Forth at Aberdour

Posted on 20 February 2022 by Katrina

I had been looking forward to the 19th of February for at least a month, or whenever I realised that the big Edinburgh antiques fair at Ingliston was scheduled for that weekend, it would be the fisrt fair since befpre the beginning of Covid, I was desperate to have a good old rake around after more than two years of staying home. Sadly it wasn’t to be as on Friday night as I was tootling around on the internet I decided just to check up and make sure the fair was still on – of course it was CANCELLED! I was/am so disappointed. There was no explanation at all but possibly it was the horrendous weather forecast which led to the cancellation, although in the Edinburgh area it was just the possibility of some rain or snow that was expected. As it happens we’ve had a very placid weekend weather wise for once as Storm Eunice hit mainly southern England and Wales.

Anyway, we decided to drive to a rake around a ‘collectables’ place at Inverkeithing, which had nothing worth buying and then drove on along the coast to Aberdour, some ten miles or so from us.

We couldn’t take the usual circular walk that we normally do as the wooden footbridge that we have to go over had been washed away. So when we got down to the beach we just had to turn around and go back the way we had come, but not before I took a few photos looking out over the Firth of Forth, the first one from the wee harbour and the others looking over to Edinburgh.

As you can see it was a sparkling day! There’s another antiques fair scheduled for May, fingers crossed that one goes ahead.

Cockburnspath and Cove, Borders, Scotland

Posted on 29 July 2020 by Katrina

Last Friday was a beautiful blue sky day which was great as we had arranged to go and visit some friends for the afternoon. The journey to Cockburnspath – or Co’path as it is known to the locals takes us over the new Queensferry Crossing (bridge) south of Edinburgh and it’s about a 160 mile all round journey for us, it was our first big day out since the lockdown in February. If you’re interested in history have a look here, it’s a very historic area.

We’ve been going on daily walks during the lockdown but it was just so nice to walk somewhere different. The first stretch of our legs took us past St Helen’s Church, That’s my sister’s name and I hadn’t even realised there was a Saint Helen. The church dates from the 1500s.

If you’ve been visiting ‘Pining’ for a while then you’ve probably seen photos like these before. We always walk to the nearby village of Cove on the coast with Uther the red and white setter. Apparently there aren’t many of that breed left. Uther is a bit daft and unusually for a dog he never goes into the water. He drank some sea-water as a pup and it seems to have put him off having too close an encounter ever again. It’s a pity some humans don’t have that sort of aversion when they have their first hangover!

The two old cottages are still standing, no doubt one day they’ll be washed away by a big storm as happened to the many other cottages that were here. Now these ones are just used for storing creels and various other bits and pieces of fishing gear. I wouldn’t mind living in one of them – for fine days only.

It was nice to see friends and have a wee bit of normality back in our lives, but I still don’t want to go anywhere crowded where you can’t socially distance easily.

Dunnottar Castle – part 3

Posted on 28 January 2020 by Katrina

After looking all around Dunnottar Castle we decided to walk along the coastal path to the First World War memorial that we could see in the distance.

We had no idea how far away the memorial was and I had a horrible feeling it might be as much as five miles but it only took us about 20 minutes to reach it, it’s very deceptive. We found out it’s a Second World War memorial too.

It’s a lovely coastal walk and the cliffs look like something out of a British Rail travel poster.

It was a blustery day and the sea was quite wild in places, what a great way to blow any cobwebs way, if you still have any by then!

Here’s a short video showing some of the rocks and nearby headland.

Warnemunde, Germany

Posted on 21 May 2019 by Katrina

The very first Baltic place that we visited on our recent cruise was Warnemunde in the former East Germany. Some people took bus trips to Berlin from here, but it was a seven hour round trip for a very short time in Berlin so we opted to stay in the lovely small town and enjoy walking along the beautiful sandy beach. Actually it was really quite warm and we really had a good time here.

I have no idea what it was like during Cold War times but there are now a lot of fairly newly built hotels and the place was heaving with German tourists so it’s obviously very popular with the natives. You can also take a train to Rostock from here if you really pine for a large town or city.

The streets were well planted up with mainly tulips and pansies.

We chose to walk back into the town using the beautiful woodland walk which edges the beach, it got us out of the glare of the sun, a good thing as I had forgotten my sun hat.

The town was very busy but we did manage to get one photo of a typical street with very German looking buildings.

There were some very talented sand sculptors around. Neptune is somehow very Germanic looking don’t you think?

I don’t know how anyone could have the patience to do something like this, especially as they are so fleeting and won’t last long after all the hard work expended on them.

So that was a glimpse of the coastal area of Warnemunde, I’ll leave the park for another post.

East Neuk Easter

Posted on 26 April 2019 by Katrina

Easter Sunday was a gorgeous day in the East Neuk of Fife where we were lucky enough to be celebrating the day at the home of our newly extended family by marriage in Cellardyke. Below are a few photos that I took from their verandah – looking over to the Isle of May in the distance, it was a wee bit hazy.

It was all go on the Firth of Forth – which is really the North Sea at Cellardyke, with next landfall being Norway.

Two lots of rowers went past in quite big boats and they went at quite a lick. There has been an upsurge in competitive rowing between the Fife coastal villages recently although I think it’s mainly women tha take part in it.

You should be able to see one of the big heavy rowing boats in the background. A pod of four dolphins arrived and swam under and around the kayakers for a bit before swimming off further along the coast, but they turned out to be impossible to photograph.

Ella and Zinki are waiting patiently at the gate which leads onto the beach. Zinki the spaniel had already cut his paws on shards of shell or something but it didn’t seem to be bothering him much, he was still determined to get into that freezing water again – and he did!

It did get a bit chilly later on, but by then we were into the home-made chocolate so nobody minded. It was a great day.

Another walk – Cockburnspath and Cove, Scottish Borders / Berwickshire

Posted on 31 March 2019 by Katrina

We had arranged to go and visit our friend Eric last Monday and luckily it turned out to be a beautiful day for it. But then it always seems to be a blue sky sparkling sort of a day around Cove and Cockburnspath in Berwickshire whenever we go there. Why not join me on my walk there?

The lands of Cockburnspath were part of the dowry given by James IV of Scotland to Margaret Tudor (daughter of Henry VII of England) on their marriage in 1503, it’s a lovely place but so off the beaten track that few people seem to know about the place. Our visits always include a walk down to the coast to the teeny wee historic harbour of Cove. This time we went the scenic way along narrow lanes, avoiding the main road. This flowering currant was putting on a good show beside one rather remote cottage.

The lane becomes a narrow footpath, as you can see the daffodils are out.

It isn’t long before you catch a glimpse of the coast in the distance across some fields.

I was relieved to see that the tide wasn’t too far in.

Uther the red and white setter was in a hurry to get down there, but I lagged behind him, Jack and Eric, taking my time to get some photos.

It certainly felt like spring had sprung, but Uther didn’t brave the sea, in fact he never does. He just loves the sights and smells, and enjoys digging up crabs to crunch now and again. I suspect those crabs must be dead but they don’t seem to cause him any harm.

I’ll continue with our journey tomorrow. I hope you’re up for it, it’s just a pity that you can’t catch the fresh coastal air.

Meanwhile you can see more of my older photos here.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Category Archives: Coast