Category: Scotland
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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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From Riot to Rainbow Bunting
Killing time before the Aberdeen ferry, we turned a corner in Lerwick and walked straight into their Pride March. Shetland, June 2026. Granite streets, rainbow bunting, children playing snare drums under a rain-filled sky. A reminder that this all started somewhere very different. The first Pride was not a parade. It was a brawl. On…
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Ling Ness
Our last day on Shetland. It started wet, because of course it did, then turned rather nice — because Shetland seems to do exactly as it pleases. A tad breezy, mind. Those wind turbines on the Hill of Flamister stood completely still on the horizon, shut down to stop themselves tearing apart. The very thing…
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Ayre of Billigroot: The Law That Scotland Cannot Kill
I bought a 1956 guidebook off eBay. It was a good decision. It mentioned a beach at Stavaness with “almost spherical granite boulders.” That was enough. The likely candidate was the Ayre of Billigroot, though calling it an ayre is generous. The word comes from the Old Norse “eyrr,” meaning a gravel beach. The Vikings…
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Lunna: the Truck System, the Oldest Kirk and the Secret War
Lunnasting drives a wild, rocky finger of land deep into the eastern mouth of Yell Sound. The men who lived here were something rather more than fishermen. “Never spaek o da Lunnasting men” — the old saying said it all. They were beyond ordinary reckoning. That narrow strip of land is all that keeps Lunna…
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Otters Wick: The End of the Bohus
The tranquil waters of Otters Wick hides a tragic history. In the above photo, Black Skerry sits darkly left of centre; just out of shot to the left lies the jagged headland where the steel barque Bohus was lost in April 1924. The tragedy came down to a single, stupid mistake. Seeking a bearing in…
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Planticrubs: Shetland’s Ingenious Stone Nurseries
Looking south over the village of Burravoe on the island of Yell, a planticrub sits on the hillside like a small, collapsed fort that never quite finished deciding what it wanted to be. These dry-stone enclosures are scattered across Shetland in their hundreds, most of them abandoned. They look like the ruins of huts. They…