Where's Bertie? He's at the campsite attached to the Rosehearty Community Boat Club, where it costs £10 per night. Electricity is available (limited number of hook-up points) at £10 extra per night (£5 in summer).
Weather: Lightly overcast and noticeably breezy.
There were no youth-gatherings in our car park last night, so a peaceful night was had, until 0550 this morning when someone decided it would be a good lark to drive through the car park with their hand on their horn. That woke me with a start, and I stayed awake thereafter, even if I didn't get out of bed until 0740.
We didn't rush around getting ready and my gpx track tells me that it was two hours later when Mick abandoned me at the end of a track, around 1.5km before the turn to Gardenstown.
There I found that a network of engineered paths have been installed across the headland and down to the ruins of St John's Church. The latter is the route I took.
Engineered paths and benches!
And some signs telling you where the paths go.
In 2014 we thrashed around by the church for an age before finding our way down onto Gardenstown beach. Ten years may have passed, but I hadn't forgotten the route, so there was no hesitation today as I followed the path.
View over the church ruin & Gardenstown. See how close the front row of cottages in Gardenstown is to the sea? The settlement a bit further along the coast is Crovie.
Gardenstown is every bit as picturesque as I remembered, with rows of cottages gable-on to the sea wall. That sea wall only sits about 3 metres in front of them, and those cottages must get battered during northerly winds. Most of them sport sturdy wooden shutters on their downstairs windows. Further on there was a section of path covered in seaweed, confirming my thoughts about the reach of the sea; in strong winds stones must get hurled at the houses too.
The coast path between Gardenstown and Crovie has been repaired since I was last there, so I didn't have to ignore any 'path closed' signs.
Cliff-hugging concrete walkway between the two villages
Crovie is a tiny place, consisting only of the seafront cottages (the other villages I've been through have extended backwards from the sea), but there was no value in me walking past the dwellings there, as my onwards route took the narrow, twisting lane out of the village (hamlet, I suppose).
Weather: Lightly overcast and noticeably breezy.
There were no youth-gatherings in our car park last night, so a peaceful night was had, until 0550 this morning when someone decided it would be a good lark to drive through the car park with their hand on their horn. That woke me with a start, and I stayed awake thereafter, even if I didn't get out of bed until 0740.
We didn't rush around getting ready and my gpx track tells me that it was two hours later when Mick abandoned me at the end of a track, around 1.5km before the turn to Gardenstown.
There I found that a network of engineered paths have been installed across the headland and down to the ruins of St John's Church. The latter is the route I took.
In 2014 we thrashed around by the church for an age before finding our way down onto Gardenstown beach. Ten years may have passed, but I hadn't forgotten the route, so there was no hesitation today as I followed the path.
Gardenstown is every bit as picturesque as I remembered, with rows of cottages gable-on to the sea wall. That sea wall only sits about 3 metres in front of them, and those cottages must get battered during northerly winds. Most of them sport sturdy wooden shutters on their downstairs windows. Further on there was a section of path covered in seaweed, confirming my thoughts about the reach of the sea; in strong winds stones must get hurled at the houses too.
The coast path between Gardenstown and Crovie has been repaired since I was last there, so I didn't have to ignore any 'path closed' signs.
Crovie is a tiny place, consisting only of the seafront cottages (the other villages I've been through have extended backwards from the sea), but there was no value in me walking past the dwellings there, as my onwards route took the narrow, twisting lane out of the village (hamlet, I suppose).
Looking down on Crovie
Walking the track over to Northfield, I came upon a gate and a map, telling me of some paths around Troup Head. The track I was on would have been the easier and shorter route, but surely the coast-hugging path would be more pleasing? It was! (And I can say that with certainty, having walked the track before.)
Engineered paths, complete with steps up and down the steepest rises, and with the occasional bench (a rarity on in-the-sticks paths in the UK), took me cliff-huggingly around the headland. Occasional gates in the cliff-side fence invited me to gannet viewpoints, but I'm afraid to say I didn't visit any (north facing cliffs in a strong southerly wind to see some birds that would have had me thinking 'yep, it's a sea bird').
A substantial amount of path has been installed where 10 years ago passage around this headland involved quite a number of barbed wire fences.
I thoroughly enjoyed that section, but hot on its heels was a troulesome section. In 2014 we managed to get from Northfield over to a track by Hell's Lum, but it involved gorse and barbed wire fences. I pored over aerial photos over the weekend, and decided on the approach I would take this time. As previously, I came upon a waymarker, but just the one. The route I chose: a) was only feasible because the crops have been harvested (the fields had clearly been cropped right up to their boundaries); and b) was also highly troublesome.
On the plus side, I didn't have to climb any fences, barbed or otherwise, but I thrashed around, wiggled about and back-and-forthed, until I conceded that I was going to have to descend into a rift/ravine/geo (not sure what the correct term would be) and climb back up the other side, where at least I could see a trodden line. On the plus side, I walked past Hell's Lum (Hell's Chimney - effectlively a pothole with a tunnel linking it to the sea). I resisted the easy-enough-looking path to descend into it, as no-one would have thanked me if I'd come a cropper there.
I was mightily glad to finally thrash my way through and find myself on the track that took me up to the car park, and thus the road. As much as I dislike road walking, it felt like I'd had that car park within my view for weeks, without being able to reach it. (Incidentally, on one of my attempts to reach it I came across an unlawful 'Private Land - Keep out' sign that looked pretty recent. However, I came upon it from behind, and I cannot see how or why anyone would have approached it from the side it was facing. If there was a feasible way through, I would have taken it!)
There was nothing for it (or so I thought) but a roadwalk for three-and-a-bit kilometres then, and I gave thought to calling Mick and asking for a lift, as there seemed little value in doing the rest of the route to where he was parked, in New Aberdour. I'm glad I decided to continue, as, it turned out, there was value to be had.
(Small interlude to just mention that the reason I've been walking this coast this week is because I vetted quite a few TGO Challenge routes last year that went that way, and I was conscious that my knowledge from 10 years ago could well be out of date, so I thought I'd revisit it by way of research. And, because who wouldn't want to walk along a pretty coast when they've got a few days to spare?)
My recollection was that, once I left the B-road, the track via Bankhead was tarmac. It turns out that recollection was entirely false. It's a grassy track for much of its length(and quite overgrown on one section). However, before I got that far I saw a signpost suggesting there was a footpath to Pennan, so I took a detour back on myself to check it out. A little overgrown with brush and gorse on the between-fences initial section, but perfectly passable. Pity I'd not come across it when I was researching the route on the weekend (it's evident on Open Source Mapping), as it would have saved much of the road walk. An even bigger pity that these paths aren't on Ordnance Survey maps, as if people don't know about them, they won't be walked, and if they're not walked the gorse will claim them.
It turns out a path has also been engineered between Aberdour and New Aberdour, running adjacent to the road. Just before I reached the latter, I spied Bertie exactly where I expected him to be.
He was being a bit naughty. I'd seen the 'Max weight 30CWT' sign when I'd found the car park on StreetView, but, having absolutely no idea what CWT meant, I just assumed it was referring to HGVs. Mick has since educated me on the point. And I've also since Googled the weights of various cars and see that even a modern VW Golf is too heavy to use that car park.
There was no cafe visit to be had in New Aberdour. There's not much to the place and some of what there is is boarded up. So, after lunch in Bertie I gave Mick the options for where we could stay tonight, and Rosehearty is where he chose.
We are again sitting metres away from the sea, which is in the form of a low-lying bay here.
"Would you like electric hook-up" Mick was asked when he went to pay. He said not. "That's good" said the chap "as all the hook-up points are taken." Still a valid question, I suppose, as we might have chosen not to stay, had we wanted electric.
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