Where's Bertie? He's in a car park, next to the sea, on the edge of Banff.
Weather: Mainly sunny. A bit of a breeze, but westerly, so not a problem for me.
A delightfully quiet night was had in Cullen, but, per plan, we left this morning. You can stay at the Aire for a maximum of 48 hours, and you can't return for 48 hours without prior permission - even if your original stay was only 24 hours or less. It seems a bit odd to me (particularly as we might want to return on Wednesday night); surely a max 48 hours in any 96 hours would be more sensible, because why can you stay for 48 consecutive hours, but not 48 in 72?
Anyroadup, we left and 5km later Mick pulled over into a bus-stop and I jumped out. I had initially intended to return to Findlater Castle this morning, but having travelled the access road on StreetView, it looked like a detour that was potentially more trouble than it was worth (2km-ish on single track road with few passing places). So, I opted to miss out around 2km of the coast path and rejoin it in Sandend instead.
There's a good path/trodden line around to Portsoy, and Portsoy is a lovely fishing village. When we walked the coast beyond Portsoy on the TGO Challenge in 2014, we found ourselves trespassing through a working quarry, so I planned a slightly different route this time to avoid it, but involving the same bit of coast path as far as Cowhythe Hill. That bit of path had only just been constructed in 2014, and we chatted with a chap involved in its development. By appearances today, it hasn't been maintained since. For the final 300m before Cowhythe Hill in particular, I kept coming across bits of infrastructure (mini-bridges and stone steps), but inbetween them the path was overgrown and erroded. With a steep drop off on one side, care was needed.
After 3.5km on a quiet B-road, I took a track (that we didn't investigate in 2014, but I read a blog the other day from someone who had used it) back to the coast. There I made the wrong choice between the high path and the low; the high path dead-ended at fences around a rift in the landscape and I found myself thrashing, somewhat uncomfortably, through gorse to get down to the lower path.
Soon after I plunged a foot into a marsh-pool that, had I spotted it, could have easily been avoided, but a few minutes later I found myself sploshing through great swathes of unavoidable marsh, so no matter.
Whilst I was doing all of this, Mick had driven around to Banff, and at a suitable time he set out to run towards me. We met just W of Whitehills - another lovely fishing village.
I'd been planning on having lunch and a pot of tea in a cafe there, but on his outward leg Mick hadn't passed anywhere that was open and I found myself unmotivated to detour in search (Google would have been my friend; I now know that there would have been a choice of 1 establishment, and that we could have effected a shortcut if we'd gone there). So, we power-marched the final few km back to Bertie for lunch. That took us through the campsite where we camped in 2014, where they wouldn't believe that we didn't have an electric hook up cable and a heater in our small backpacks (or otherwise expected a sudden and huge rush of vans wanting electric hook up), and thus wouldn't let us use a pitch by the facilities block, sending us instead right back to the far end of the site, a fair distance from the toilets. Out of interest I looked how much it would cost for us to stay there tonight in Bertie: £35!!
I had intended for us to move over to the far side of Macduff (the adjacent village/small town) this afternoon, for me to take a little recce of the coast there (in 2014 there were crops right up to the field boundaries, and impenetrable gorse on the seaward side), but we got distracted and find ourselves still in Banff as the sun goes down, so it looks like we're staying here tonight. This car park has a reputation for youth gatherings & loudness at night, although if we do get disturbed, we'll be in good company, as two other vans have arrived this afternoon and I guess they are also staying the night.
Weather: Mainly sunny. A bit of a breeze, but westerly, so not a problem for me.
A delightfully quiet night was had in Cullen, but, per plan, we left this morning. You can stay at the Aire for a maximum of 48 hours, and you can't return for 48 hours without prior permission - even if your original stay was only 24 hours or less. It seems a bit odd to me (particularly as we might want to return on Wednesday night); surely a max 48 hours in any 96 hours would be more sensible, because why can you stay for 48 consecutive hours, but not 48 in 72?
Anyroadup, we left and 5km later Mick pulled over into a bus-stop and I jumped out. I had initially intended to return to Findlater Castle this morning, but having travelled the access road on StreetView, it looked like a detour that was potentially more trouble than it was worth (2km-ish on single track road with few passing places). So, I opted to miss out around 2km of the coast path and rejoin it in Sandend instead.
There's a good path/trodden line around to Portsoy, and Portsoy is a lovely fishing village. When we walked the coast beyond Portsoy on the TGO Challenge in 2014, we found ourselves trespassing through a working quarry, so I planned a slightly different route this time to avoid it, but involving the same bit of coast path as far as Cowhythe Hill. That bit of path had only just been constructed in 2014, and we chatted with a chap involved in its development. By appearances today, it hasn't been maintained since. For the final 300m before Cowhythe Hill in particular, I kept coming across bits of infrastructure (mini-bridges and stone steps), but inbetween them the path was overgrown and erroded. With a steep drop off on one side, care was needed.
After 3.5km on a quiet B-road, I took a track (that we didn't investigate in 2014, but I read a blog the other day from someone who had used it) back to the coast. There I made the wrong choice between the high path and the low; the high path dead-ended at fences around a rift in the landscape and I found myself thrashing, somewhat uncomfortably, through gorse to get down to the lower path.
Soon after I plunged a foot into a marsh-pool that, had I spotted it, could have easily been avoided, but a few minutes later I found myself sploshing through great swathes of unavoidable marsh, so no matter.
Whilst I was doing all of this, Mick had driven around to Banff, and at a suitable time he set out to run towards me. We met just W of Whitehills - another lovely fishing village.
I'd been planning on having lunch and a pot of tea in a cafe there, but on his outward leg Mick hadn't passed anywhere that was open and I found myself unmotivated to detour in search (Google would have been my friend; I now know that there would have been a choice of 1 establishment, and that we could have effected a shortcut if we'd gone there). So, we power-marched the final few km back to Bertie for lunch. That took us through the campsite where we camped in 2014, where they wouldn't believe that we didn't have an electric hook up cable and a heater in our small backpacks (or otherwise expected a sudden and huge rush of vans wanting electric hook up), and thus wouldn't let us use a pitch by the facilities block, sending us instead right back to the far end of the site, a fair distance from the toilets. Out of interest I looked how much it would cost for us to stay there tonight in Bertie: £35!!
I had intended for us to move over to the far side of Macduff (the adjacent village/small town) this afternoon, for me to take a little recce of the coast there (in 2014 there were crops right up to the field boundaries, and impenetrable gorse on the seaward side), but we got distracted and find ourselves still in Banff as the sun goes down, so it looks like we're staying here tonight. This car park has a reputation for youth gatherings & loudness at night, although if we do get disturbed, we'll be in good company, as two other vans have arrived this afternoon and I guess they are also staying the night.
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