Tuesday 14 August 2018

Through the Gaps - North of the border!


There's one word on everyone's lips in Edinburgh in August..



Festival!..


away from the city after heading up the Snow Road are the Cairngorms...


wiith its big hills and even bigger landscapes...


and the upper reaches of rivers like the Spey which provides the shingle banks or reds that salmon and sea-trout create small pools in which to spawn in November...


diametrically opposed to Cornwall on the north east coast is the tiny Port Errol names after it's local benefactor who had it built in the early 1800s to transport salmon via single track train line (along with gulls eggs taking from the Bullars of Buchan...


looking through the gaps down to Aberdeen, the oil indutry capital of Europe...


the harbour is fighting for survival and trying all sorts of ways to raise money for repairs...


Including allowing overnight camping for a donation to the harbour funds...


Bullars of Buchan, the collapsed roof of a sea cave created a haven for sea birds - you can detect their presence with your nostrils well before arriving...


a few miles up the road is Scotland's biggest fishing port...


with its huge new market allowing easy acces for HGV transport at the rear...


everything is on a grand scale here, the ice works...


ship repair shed tower over the port...


where some familiar faces are evident like the prawn trawler Moray Endeavour one of the fleet of Boats that have been regular visitors to Newlyn in the Spring looking for langoustine...


not all the boats are huge stern trawlers built to fish Rockall...


the harbour is also home to a fleet of inshore boats everyone of them rigged with the same mackerel strippers...


and the two boats that provided those dramatic photos of the Ocean Harvester in mountainous seas while fishing at Rockall...


unlike Newlyn, Peterhead is still able to support the fishing community with a mission building...


although there is a Cornish connection on display in the mission doorway...


Further round the myriad of docksides and inner pools is what looks like the entrance to the original fish market building...


with one of Scotlands most well-known pair team boats the Lapwing...


and fellow pair-partner, Budding Rose...


looking back through the gaps...


Before moving to the outer basin where the might of the Scottish pelagic fleet are on display like the Quantus...


and the Chris Andra, whose previous incarnation was also a regular visitor to Cornish waters when those well known fushing families like the Taits and Buchans steamed diwn late in the year to join the mackerel bonanza of the late 1970s...


a few miles up the road is the lonely light of Rattray, accessible from the beach only at low water.