Monday 17th July 2023
Today we just did a short walk after a long drive. We have been dog-sitting our son’s dog, Frank, for the last ten days and today he is coming north with us and we will hand him back to Joe and Natalie who are holidaying in Scotland.
After the necessary doggie breaks en route, we arrived at Fraserburgh at about 15.20 having left the other car at Inverallochy. It took ten minutes to get us and Frank organised and we set off at 15.20. It was an easy coast path walk around the town and harbour of Fraserburgh. We passed the Lighthouse Museum which we visited with our children many years ago and is well worth a visit. Fraserburgh still has a busy fishing harbour even if fishing has declined considerably over the last few decades. The lighthouse of Kinnaird Head was Scotland’s first land-based lighthouse and was built on the tower of the castle.
Then we came to the beach carpark where there was a very happy reunion between and Joe and Natalie. We were all going to have a walk together along the beach before the other three returned to their holiday at Balnagown.
Fraserburgh Beach is a good, sandy beach backed by dunes and it was fun to walk it in the company of an exuberant dog while chatting with Joe and Natalie.
At the far end of the beach, the Water of Philorth discharges into the sea; there is a footbridge if you walk inland into the dunes. Joe walked across the river in his wellies to check for us how deep it was and, with the falling tide and despite the recent rain, he showed us that we could paddle through in our over-wellies quite easily.
We then said our goodbyes to the three of them as they turned back along the beach to the car park and we set off across the river. That saved us ¾ mile and we then had less than a mile to walk around Cairnbulg Point and into Inverallochy.
There is a moving memorial sculpture to men lost at sea in Iverallochy. As we were to discover, there are a number of other remarkably similar memorials in towns further down the coast.
Just Coasting 