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Findlater Castle
Findlater Castle does not so much sit on the cliff as clings to it, and the history behind it is stranger than the ruin lets on. The first mention of a stronghold here dates to 1246, and King Alexander III had it repaired in the 1260s to guard against Viking invasion. It did not go…
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The Red Well: Roman Ruin or Victorian Fancy?
An information board stands nearby the well, quoting local caretaker Charles M Napier. He was certain the building was Roman. His proof was the doorway. It measures out in neat metres, he wrote, and that alone told him the builders worked in Roman measurements. Here is the snag. Metres did not exist until the 1790s,…
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The Bridge of Alvah and the Legend of James MacPherson
The Bridge of Alvah, spanning the gorge of the River Deveron. This crossing was built almost one hundred years after James MacPherson is said to have lept across it. MacPherson was a fiddler, a fighter, and a thorn in the side of every laird from Elgin to Keith. Born the illegitimate son of the Laird…
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Gardenstown
Gardenstown clings to the cliffs between Macduff and Fraserburgh, a proper cling too, as if it might slide into the sea on a bad day. Alexander Garden of Troup founded it in 1720, and yet hardly anyone calls it Gardenstown at all. Locals stick with Gamrie, the old parish name, borrowed straight from the bay…
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Rattray Head
I know the name from the Shipping Forecast, tucked between Cape Wrath and Berwick-upon-Tweed, and yet I have never set foot here. Odd, that. A name can live in your head for years before the place ever does. The Aberdeenshire coast does not do gentle. Gurly rocks and cliffs run for miles, broken here and…
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St Ninian’s Eco-Leisure and Wellness Park
Every summer for close on thirty years we have travelled north on the M90 past a mighty scar of an opencast coal mine. I have no early memories of it; my eyes must have been blind to the ugliness. Ten years or so ago it began to be transformed into a country park of sorts.…
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Almscliff Crag, standing guard over Wharfedale
Rock climbers know it for routes with names like Megadoom and Wall of Horrors. Locals in August 1939 knew it for something rather more thrilling: espionage. Three men with foreign accents were spotted near the Crag. Naturally, panic set in. That evening, a flashing light was seen from the summit, and every good Yorkshireman drew…
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Quakers’ Causeway
Stanghow Moor has not seen my studs in years, and it is easy to see why. It sits west of Birk Brow, bleak and boggy as you like, with barely a path or sheep trod worth the name cut through it. I can’t believe I used to run over this stuff. One path does buck…
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Leuan’s River
I learnt a new word today, and then several more chasing it. A veritable glossary. The first came from the Canadian Prime Minister. The rest turned up while I looked up what that word, a hydronym, meant. Every day’s a school day. One find was potamonymy, the study of river names, and it has set…
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Cherry-Picking the Ashes
Another shot from yesterday, taken not a hundred yards away. This is Penrod Spring. These days it amounts to little more than a damp patch in the heather, not easy to find. Once, though, it mattered enough that somebody built a dry-stone wall round it, by hand, stone on stone, to mark it out as…
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