Walk 183 -- Pennan to Gardenstown

Ages:  Colin was 66 years and 7 days.  Rosemary was 63 years and 150 days.

Weather:  Fair-weather cloud.  No wind.  Cool.

Location:  Pennan to Gardenstown.

Distance:  5½ miles.

Total distance:  1578½ miles.

Terrain:  Field, roads, tracks, and concrete.  Undulating.

Tide:  In.

Rivers:  None.

Ferries:  None.

Piers:  None.

Kissing gates:  None.

Pubs:  None.

‘Historic Scotland’ properties:  None.

Ferris wheels:  None.

Diversions:  None.

How we got there and back:  We were staying in a cottage in Pennan.  This morning Colin drove to Gardenstown, parked the car and walked back the shortest route he could find.  When he returned, we started the Walk from the cottage.

At the end, we returned to the car park along the front at Gardenstown.  After drinking tea from our flask, we drove back to Pennan.

The next day we started our long journey home to Malvern.  We did it over two days because we are too far north now to manage it in one. We stayed overnight in a soulless motorway inn.  The fact that it now takes two days to drive home from where we have been hiking really brought home to us how far we have walked.  And our journey would have been another three hours if we still lived in Bognor!

That  ends  ten  years  of  coastal  walking !
(Next Walk, we shall be entering our second decade of coastal walking!)

We began today’s Walk in Pennan by the famous telephone box.  In 1983 a film was made in the village.  It was called ‘Local Hero’ and starred Burt Lancaster.  Much of the filming was done in Pennan, though the beach scenes were filmed near Arisaig on the west coast — that was because they wanted a sandy beach, and there are only rocks at Pennan.  The red telephone box by the hotel (which was closed when we were staying there) featured in the film, in fact it played a significant role. People have come from all over the world to be photographed making a call from Pennan’s red telephone box, and the village has been basking in glory ever since.  (The film is still repeated at regular intervals on TV.)  So we thought a picture by the box was a good way to start.

  We climbed the steep road out of the village, and turned into a field where a path took us across two fields along the top of the cliffs.  We could see how the cottages are tucked right under the crags leaving nowhere to go if the cliffs were to collapse.  We could see the roof of the cottage which had been our home for two weeks, tucked in behind the others as if it is hiding.  We were really glad we didn’t know the true story about the mudslide until after we got home!

 

Soon we had to come out on to the road, as there is no footpath along this beautiful coast.  The road was closed to traffic due to repairs being done to its sides, but it was open to pedestrians.  (In actual fact, Colin drove through there this morning to take the car to Gardenstown, and we drove back through there after the Walk. The diversion was miles, so we were prepared to wait while they compressed the new tarmac and moved their machinery out of the way.  It only delayed us about five minutes.  We passed Nethermill where the ‘old road’ looped round over a little bridge so we were able to do a slight detour.

I was very slow going up the hill out of Nethermill, my toes hurt today due to friction against my boots.  I don’t know why as my boots fit perfectly well.  I think I was just tired.  At the top of the hill we bypassed the road to a car park above Castle Point and Cullykhan Bay because it is a dead end.  But we did go out there a couple of times on ‘rest’ days.  Last week, when my blister was so bad that I could hardly walk, we drove down there to recce out the possibility of a footpath through to Troup Head.  We met a local lady in the car park who was walking her dog.  She told us there was no way through — even the footbridge in the woods, which is marked on our map, had been ripped out by the owner last year because some kid had fallen through it and tried to sue him for negligence!  (Don’t they know that part of the ‘Open Access’ code in Scotland says you must take responsibility for your own actions?)  So we gave up that line of enquiry.

In July, when we were staying in a cottage in nearby Gardenstown, we again drove down to the car park.  We walked down broken steps to the beach of Cullykhan Bay.  There we found a HUGE cave that went right through to the other side of the headland.  Colin was in his element, and disappeared into it for about half an hour!  But it was too rough and slippery for me, so I didn’t risk it.  When he eventually emerged, we both climbed up to the headland of Castle Point.  It is the remains of an Iron-Age fort.  From there we had fantastic views of the cliffs, of more caves in the next headland, and back towards Pennan even though it was getting increasingly misty while we were there.

Back to the present Walk.  We marched for about a mile along the road, then turned off at Middleton.  At Protston we ignored the road out towards Troup Head because, again, it was a dead end.

But we did visit the nature reserve at Troup Head later in the year when we were staying in Gardenstown.

For on Troup Head cliffs nest 1500 pairs of gannets — Scotland’s only mainland gannetry.

They have been nesting here since 1988, and they are a magnificent sight!

Some of the nests had fluffy chicks on them, though by early August (when we visited) they were BIG fluffy chicks!

Colin was in his element, using his long lens to get some terrific photographs.

I just sat on the clifftop with my little telescope soaking in the atmosphere.

It was very noisy!

Back to the present Walk — we took a track past a farm, and went downhill through fabulous gorse bushes.

The yellow flowers were so bright they almost hurt our eyes!

We passed other flowers too, including fantastic wild orchids.

We didn’t have to cross the river and climb up to the road (the contours are so close together it was difficult to see on the map) as the track we were on turned down to Crovie Harbour.

We found a bench by the harbour to sit and eat our lunch in this amazing little village.

Crovie is a lovely place, a bit like Pennan only better!

We visited it several times because we loved its peacefulness.

Our first visit was when my blister was bad and I couldn’t walk far — but the sun was shining that day which is why some of the pictures were taken in brilliant sunshine!

That day we walked right along to the end, and a lady came out of the last cottage to sit in the sun.  “I live in Aberdeen, but this is my little bit of heaven!” she told me.  Then she rather spoiled the effect by getting out a cigarette and lighting up!

Unfortunately, like Pennan, most of the fishermen’s cottages in Crovie are holiday homes.

The difference about Crovie is that there is no road in front of the houses so it is impossible to drive a car along there.

Therefore many of the cottagers own a handcart to push their goods to and from their homes, and even to move their furniture in when they first arrive, I suppose.   Also the cliffs don’t tower so menacingly above the houses like they do in Pennan, so presumably the inhabitants are safer from rock falls and mudslides — maybe!

We passed the end of the steep zigzag road up out of the village to follow the coast path to Gardenstown.  A notice warned us that this was a ‘dangerous path’ with pictures of rocks falling down on our heads.  It was a quiet calm day, so we decided to take the risk!

We saw a stonechat on a twig, and eiders on the water.

Then we came to a sculpture which, to us, looked like a hairy stone dustbin!  We couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be.  The stone plaque under the ‘lid’ told us: 

TO  COMMEMORATE  THE  BRAVERY  OF

THE  MEN  AND  WOMEN  OF

CROVIE,  GARDENSTOWN  AND  THE

PARISH  OF  GAMRIE

WHO  ON  FEBRUARY 11^TH  1906

RESCUED  THE  CREW  OF  THE

SS  VIGILANT

WHICH  DURING  A  VIOLENT  STORM  RAN

AGROUND  ON  THIS  SHORE

It took them a hundred years to erect this monument, by which time everyone involved must have been dead.  And then we thought ‘what a strange kind of sculpture’!

We passed a dribbly kind of waterfall, but pretty nonetheless, and then rounded the ‘dangerous rocks’, where cliffs rose spectacularly above our heads, into Gardenstown.  This is a town rather than a village — it even has a bus service!  The harbour is bigger, there are more houses, a pub and a shop, and the cliffs slope much more gently away from the shore.

We soon passed our car, so we chucked our rucksacks in as there was no need to carry them anymore this Walk.  We ambled all round the harbour, then along the shore until the houses came to an end.  The beach is very rocky here too.

That ended Walk no.183, we shall pick up Walk no.184 at the western end of Gardenstown.  It was five to three, so the Walk had taken us four hours ten minutes.   We returned to the car which was parked at the eastern end of town.  After drinking tea from our flask, we drove back to Pennan. 

The next day we started our long journey home to Malvern.  We did it over two days because we are now too far north to manage it in one.  That fact really brought home to us how far we have walked, and our journey would have been another three hours if we still lived in Bognor.  The roads were very quiet and we were not involved in any hold-ups.  But just before we left Scotland on the Gretna road, we were stopped by the police!  They wouldn’t say, at first, why they had stopped us (we knew we hadn’t been speeding) but kept looking round the car at the tax disc, tyres, etc.  They asked us lots of questions about where we had been, where we were going and where we lived.  When I answered ‘Malvern, in Worcestershire’, one of them, who was looking at our Malvern Hills parking permit displayed on the windscreen, said, “Yes, she’s telling the truth because it says so here!”   The nerve!

It was only after we had asked them several times why they had stopped us and were delaying our journey that they said they had run our car number through their computer and there was “no record of any insurance”.  (Now, our insurance ran out during our stay in Scotland this time.  Knowing this, we had renewed it three weeks previously — the same policy with the same company — and paid for it in advance.  Then we had forgotten about it as it was dealt with, but had brought the old as well as the new certificate with us.)  So we showed them both our insurance certificates, and they let us go on.  They shrugged and admitted, “Sometimes our computers take a week or two for the information to get through!”  No hint of an apology!  We were furious!  Talk about Big Brother!

Bognor Regis  1998

We have now been walking the coast of mainland Britain for  TEN  YEARS !   We are a little over a third of the way round, having covered in excess of fifteen hundred miles.  We can hardly believe, ourselves, that we have walked all the way to Gardenstown from Bognor Regis!  But if we are to complete this marathon, we shall have to hurry up a bit.  In another twenty years we shall both be in our eighties, and that is a bit too old to be doing this kind of walking.

Gardenstown  2008

Walk 182 -- Fraserburgh to Pennan

Ages:  Colin was 66 years and 6 days.  Rosemary was 63 years and 149 days.

Weather:  Some sun, but mostly ‘fair-weather’ cloud.

Location:  Fraserburgh to Pennan.

Distance:  15 miles.

Total distance:  1573 miles.

Terrain:  Concrete/tarmac, roads, tracks of varying quality.  Flat to Rosehearty, then undulating.

Tide:  In, going out.

Rivers:  No.130, the Dour at Aberdour Bay.  No. 131, Auchmeddon at Pennan — this was in a deep gorge.

Ferries:  None.

Piers:  None.

Kissing gates:  None.

Pubs:  None.

‘Historic Scotland’ properties:  None.

Ferris wheels:  None.

Diversions:  None.

How we got there and back:  We were staying in a cottage in Pennan.  This morning we arranged for a taxi to pick us up at the cottage and drive us to the Lighthouse Museum in Fraserburgh.

At the end, we stepped into the cottage!

We started today’s Walk in the car park of the lighthouse museum in Fraserburgh.  The taxi driver, who had driven us there from Pennan, told us about the mass demolition of the fishermen’s cottages on Kinnaird Head.  The whole area is being razed to the ground due to the demise of the fishing industry, so that it can be ‘reinvented’ as a touristy new town.  Just one row consisting of three cottages are left, and two of these are derelict.  In the third lives an old woman who refuses to move, and it is she who feeds the feral cats.  (So we had been right when we had guessed this yesterday!)  Poor old soul, I expect she’s lived there all her life.  It would probably kill her to move!

There was also a car scrapyard in an old tin shed, but I expect its days are numbered.  We walked over demolished buildings — we could still see their ‘plans’ in the ground — and one of them we guessed was an old toilet block.  There was rubbish everywhere, but looking out to sea we could see a number of different birds.  Colin took a lovely picture of a shag sitting on a rock.

Eventually we came to a notice facing back the way we had come:  COASTAL  PATH  CLOSED .  Now they tell us!

There was a ‘sort-of’ path in the grass along the rocky coastline, so we followed it.  Someone had painted the Scottish flag on a rock just offshore.  I expect they want independence, which they are welcome to have so long as they fund themselves and don’t expect handouts from London.  And they take all their Scots out of our parliament in Westminster, especially our dour Prime Minister.  Otherwise we remain one nation.  (I’m still miffed that we can’t use our bus passes in Scotland, even though we are supposed to be the United Kingdom.)  In the end we had to revert to the road, but since it was almost on the shore it didn’t matter.  It was strewn with rubbish, but there were also flowers to look at.

We came to Sandhaven harbour.

A local group had raised thousands of pounds to restore it, but the old fishermen’s toilet halfway down one of the piers was still derelict.  We found a bench to sit on, carefully avoiding the seagull s**t which wasn’t easy, to eat our pies.  A nearby cottage had a small waterwheel on its side, I don’t know if it was working.

Pittulie has some nice houses, neat and well cared for.  After the dereliction of Fraserburgh this was a nice change.  Perhaps Fraserburgh will look good in a few years time when the rebuilding is complete.  Lets hope the locals don’t leave their rubbish everywhere then, and take pride in their new town.

 Pittulie is pretty, and we were amused by the cottage that has ‘a room with a pew’!

 

We carried on this rocky coast, and saw a heron fishing in the shallows.  We watched it until it flew off.  Colin also managed to photograph another shag.  We walked the road to Rosehearty, which was strewn with fish’n’chip papers thrown out of cars.  They were on the pavements, in the grass and had blown on to the beach.  Why are people so messy?  I started looking for something positive, but I think I was getting a bit desperate when I started photographing weeds and dandelions!  Actually, I quite like dandelions, a very showy flower, so long as they are not in my garden.

We got to Rosehearty and discovered that this harbour had not been restored.  In fact, there was a notice on the first pier telling us  ‘This pier is closed’.  We walked it anyway — it was only ‘closed’ because the surface was uneven and we might trip and fall off the edge.  Nanny state again!  Whatever happened to common sense?  There were boats moored against this ‘closed’ pier, so we didn’t think the locals took any notice of such ‘warnings’ either.  Part way down we came across another disused fishermen’s toilet, even more derelict than the one at Sandhaven.  Bet they had to close them because all the waste ran straight down into the sea!
We sat at a picnic table near the main harbour to eat our lunch.  Colin discovered that he had no room left on his memory card, and he hadn’t got a spare with him.  So he spent a lot of time going through the pictures in his camera deleting the ‘rubbish’ shots to make room.  We walked the real harbour piers, these ones weren’t closed and had a few boats sheltering behind the walls.  An elderly couple with expensive cameras and tripods set up to photograph the birds — real serious stuff!  I think Colin would have liked to join them, but we had a Walk to do.

We turned away from the coast through the neat cottages and took the road leading south-west out of town.  This was because the coastal footpath marked on our map came to a stop about a quarter of a mile further along the shore.  I was not willing to scramble across fields and scale barbed wire fences when there was a perfectly good tarmacked lane running parallel to the shore just four hundred yards or so inland. And we had sea views all the way because the land sloped downwards from our lane towards the sea.  But Colin went on and on about trying the clifftop to see if we could get through.  “There must be a path!”  “You don’t know if you don’t look!”  “We’re not really walking the coastline up here!”  “There’s probably a way through!”   —   “NO!”  “You can see there is NO PATH!”  “We are perfectly OK up here!”  “We can see the sea, and we are following the coast!”  “Why don’t you just SHUT UP!”  Which he did eventually when he saw a field of highland cattle and went over to photograph them.  I preferred to photograph the wayside flowers which were prolific.  We both then went into ‘route-march’ mode and covered the next few miles quite quickly.

 We-diverted to Aberdour beach when we got there, even though it was a dead end and we didn’t have to.  (I did this mainly to placate Colin.)  It is a nice place with caves at the end which we didn’t go over to — time was getting a little short.  There were no buildings and we were the only people there, but there was the remains of St Drostan’s well, whoever he was. We sat on a bench momentarily, and noticed with amusement that it had recently been repainted — over several protruding nails and over all the moss which had been growing on it up until it was repainted!

We came back up past a ruined church and it’s cemetery which had what looked like a small dovecot in one corner.  The track leading up from Mill Farm was steep at first, but then it opened out to sweeping views and glorious wild flowers!  Colin had seen the close contours and lack of footpaths on the map, and ceased his constant moan about ‘trying the clifftop to see if there was a way through’.  (I think he was also getting tired, as I was.)

Once past the farms the state of the track deteriorated, but it was still a way through without hurdles like ditches or fences to overcome, so I was quite happy.  We came across a cow on the track, and she kept walking ahead of us further and further away from the field she was supposed to be in.  We opened the field gate, and Colin tried to get in front of her to shoo her back.  I was going to stand in the track so she would divert through the gate, then we’d shut it quick.  But before we could put this plan into action, the farmer drove up on a pick-up. He did exactly what we were going to do, and we got the lumbering animal back in her field where she was supposed to be.  The farmer admitted it was his fault.  He had left the field gate open too long earlier in the afternoon, and realised one of his cows had ‘escaped’.  He was going to leave her because he knew she wouldn’t wander far and would come to no harm.  He couldn’t be bothered to come back and put her in the field.  Apparently his wife looked out the window and saw us hiking along, so nagged him to do something about it before the cow got to Pennan!  He was laughing about the incident.  Scottish farmers are so pleasant, at least all the ones we have spoken to have been friendly and helpful.  They realise hikers are not going to damage their fields nor harm their animals, we only want to pass by.  Since we have right of access in Scotland, we can do that and they are OK about it.  English farmers take note!

We had to go almost to the main road before we could turn back towards the coast.  Then there was still more uphill until we got to Pennan Farm — which was completely derelict!  After that we were on a footpath, the track finished at the derelict farm.  But it led us down through a sweeping field with lovely views.  And it was well-walked — in fact we met the first hiker of the whole Walk coming the other way, a man with his dogs who had come up from Pennan.  There were lots of flowers beside the path, and then we saw the rooftops of Pennan.  We were nearly there!

We emerged into Pennan by the harbour.  So we walked the walls, and didn’t throw stones as a notice chalked on a wall requested us not to.  (We weren’t going to anyway!)

 

By now we were familiar with this fabulous little fishing hamlet tucked under the cliffs, for we had been staying in one of its cottages for nearly two weeks.  We passed the ‘famous’ phone box — more about that on the next Walk — and along to the end by the village hall.  This corrugated iron building was surrounded by security fencing, and a notice told us to keep out because it was a dangerous building!  Locals had told us about a devastating mudslide last August.  The following information I gleaned at a later date from a website called ‘about aberdeen’:

On the morning of the 6 August 2007 Pennan residents were evacuated from their homes and cottages by the police for health and safety reasons. Heavy rain had caused a landslide at about 6 am which was dangerous for those Pennan houses that are built into the cliffs. Over 34 residents from the West side of Pennan village were evacuated to Pennan Inn for their safety. Some of the villagers had to be rescued by the fire service whilst others were able to clamber out of their windows because their houses were surrounded in mud and water as high as six feet. The Aberdour to Pennan road was blocked because of debris from the Pennan landslide and Grampian Fire and Rescue Service and Aberdeenshire Council were called in to clear and make safe the road. Mud and rubble from the Pennan landslide made the homes unsafe and residents were still advised not to return home on Tuesday 7 August. Police had to escort residents back to their home or cottage in the Western side of Pennan to collect personal belongings and essentials like drugs because of fears that another mudslide would occur. Police were guarding the top of the road into Pennan to stop access to the unsafe areas. An engineering assessment will be made on the area on the 40 affected properties that were thought to have been affected by about ten separate landslides. Many of  the cottages and houses had their windows, walls and roofs caved in from the mud and water with rooms such as kitchens, lounges, bedrooms and bathrooms being deluged in mud and water.

The newly refurbished Pennan village hall was hit by the landslide and suffered structural damage to the roof and building. It is feared it may now have to be demolished.
The Eastern side of Pennan was much safer and water supply from Scottish Water was restored within 24 hours.  Pennan village and harbour area opened again on Thursday 9 August 2007 though ten houses were still unsafe and there was the risk of further landslides due to wet weather.

We were really rather glad we didn’t know the full story until after we had returned home!

We also looked at the water tank, and read about the process they installed there in 2005.  (Until then I think all their waste went untreated straight into the sea.)  We were told:

Waste water from the village is collected in a septic tank where natural biological processes break down the solids.  This is an ancient, low technology process that needs no chemicals or additives.  The waste materials collect in the bottom of the septic tank, and the treated water passes on to a storage tank.  Every few weeks a portion of the treated waste from the bottom of the tank is removed for disposal and the remainder is left to “seed” the process again.  The septic tank consists of three separate chambers and the waste water passes through each in turn.  This encourages settlement, and provides a good standard of treatment.

Twice each day the treated water in the storage tank is pumped out to sea when the tide is ebbing.  This gives maximum dispersion and protection for the environment and takes full advantage of the sea’s natural disinfection properties.

That ended Walk no.182, we shall pick up Walk no.183 in Pennan village.  It was six o’clock, so the Walk had taken us eight hours forty minutes.  We walked back about a hundred yards and let ourselves into our holiday cottage.  I had a bath, and Colin prepared supper.  Bliss!