Post It from Stonehaven CC site, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Monday 7th October, 2013.

Instead of taking the main road route to Stonehaven from Grantown on Spey we decided to follow the Malt Whiskey Trail for part of the way before heading off to visit Crathes Castle near Banchory. This way it was much more scenic crossing the lower lands of the Cairngorm’s although the roads were narrow in places and travelling was much slower. Not being a drinker of Scotch whiskey I am not too familiar with all the malts but realised that we were in some serious whiskey country and recognised the names of many of the distilleries that we passed on our way.

Crathes castle was built in 1596 and lived in by the Burnett family right up to recently selling the home to the National Trust for Scotland, the family still live in the grounds. The lands were originally gifted to the family by none other than Robert the Bruce and the house was quite impressive with some very ornate painted ceilings. The gardens were spectacular and it would have been particularly good to have seen them at their best. The autumn did give us the pleasure of seeing the changing colours of the deciduous trees though.

We arrived at the camp site on Stonehaven’s sea front in blustery weather with rough seas that had brought shingle and some quite large pebbles up onto the promenade at high tide. The site, actually located at Cowie, is a new Club site this year having formerly been owned and run by the Council. It had neatly manicured grass but no established trees giving it a very open aspect with a central toilet block. The hard standing pitches were separated by grassed areas and this led to many campers walking between the vans to the toilet block, a point which some had commented on in the visitor book. The facilities were excellent, there was internet access and the wardens were helpful, especially Maggie who had telephoned me back after I had left a message upon discovering there were no vacancies for the Saturday night but she was able to help us out, for which we were grateful and booked to stay for four nights.

We explored Stonehaven, a typical small coastal town with a past history of fishing which had grown around a small harbour now mainly used by sailing dinghies and other pleasure craft. The oldest building still standing date back to 1600 and is now a museum. There were various local shops and two small supermarkets in the centre so you were not left wanting for anything. We were fortunate enough to be there at the monthly farmers market and spoiled ourselves with some delicious baking. Other nice features of the local traders were an old fashioned sweet shop and an Art Décor restaurant.

We also indulged ourselves with Aunty Betty’s luxury homemade ice cream. The queue was out the door and 20 strong down the promenade and I guess it is a ‘must’ place to visit at Stonehaven. The ice cream was excellent and such good value with very generous portions. You could even have it dressed in all types of confectionary but we avoided this to ensure we had the best possible taste of the ice cream, or that is what we said! The other must have here apparently is the fish and chips with the 2013 best chippy award being won by the Bay chip shop close to the camp site. The deep fried Mars Bar was first fried here at another chippy near the harbour.

There was lots of cycling opportunities here but we decided to give the bikes a rest and did a little bit of coastal path walking. The weather was good and very warm in the sun but we think the humidity had brought out the midges and Sharon said “They must be midges because they’re in groups!” We could not make it all the way to the ruins of Dunnottar Castle due to the cliff top path being eroded in recent bad weather and the council had closed it for safety. We did visit the memorial to the War dead which stood in a commanding position on a headland overlooking the town to the north and the castle to the south. Just to the north of the camp site you could see where the Highlands Fault line met the sea and we walked to it but once again the cliff top path was a bit risky so decided against walking further and visited the ruined cliff top church cemetery.

It was quite good being on the east coast of Britain again with the sound of the Kittiwake gulls in the morning and the smell and sounds of the sea as the waves crash up the beach is a bit like a magnet to me. If we stretched our necks we could actually see the sea between the houses from our pitch. I don’t think I could ever live too far from the sea. The weather had been really warm during our stay and on more than one occasion we sat admiring the gulls from the promenade. We also watched two Ospreys as they glided above the campsite. This time they were much closer to us and we could get a good look at them with the binoculars. On another occasion we possibly saw an Eagle over a wooded area near Cowie House, it dived towards the woods and we saw a lot of smaller birds raise into the sky so we assumed it had been hunting. A local said it may well have been a Sea Eagle, it was much larger than the Ospreys we had seen.

A nice thing about visiting here was that we were going to catch up with work friends from when I worked at sea as a navigator. They had moved to the Aberdeen area with the oil industry and we had not seen them for probably 34 years. Sunday morning was spent doing the chores of laundry and washing the van again but we spent the afternoon with our friends and it was good to catch up. A surprising thing was that they had recently bought a motorhome in preparation for their retirement so we could possibly meet up somewhere in the UK, which would be a nice thing to do. They were impressed with the appearance of the site saying it had been a bit of a tip when it had been run by the Council.

We had booked to stay the Monday as well because we were not sure when our friends would have been able to visit us. Normally we would have moved on but whilst having the ability to leave a day early we did not want to miss that fish and chip supper we had been told was too good to miss and we decided to stay and have that for our tea on the Monday. Very good it was too, expensive compared to the local fish and chip shop in our village but as we are healthier eaters these days such a rare treat is not to be missed and we enjoyed it. Even Smokee cannot resist the fish and devoured his portion as if there is no tomorrow.

We enjoyed Stonehaven and the weather was very good to us. There was lots to keep you occupied and there was good transport links to Aberdeen by train and bus had we stayed longer.

Regards, Roy