Day 99 Cruden Bay to Rosehearty

 

 Date: Wednesday 30^th May 2012   Distance: 37.8 Miles

 

I tossed and turned all night and after barely 3 hours sleep we had breakfast at 8am. Bob had smoked haddock and poached egg and I had the proverbial haggis, poached egg and tomato- very nice.

 

We rode out to Slains Castle, built in 1597, on a track that was rugged and looking unlikely. This castle was reputed by some to be the inspiration for Dracula but we thought that was Whitby abbey. It was a fabulous location, not spooky in the morning but full of intact corridors with plenty of places for a vampire ambush. The ruins stand fairly near the edge of the cliff and we were dive bombed by nesting fulmars. Beside the castle is a gorge festooned with primroses. Pink alpines decorate the tops of ruined columns. I wished we could linger but a long day ahead we took the lane parallel to the sea rutted with clay puddles (the clay never washed off and it our bike stayed muddy all week)

 

 

 

Once again we marvelled at the loud bird song. It was a climb up then down into Peterhead which, until 1893, was Britain’s major whaling port. We passed a farm with a whale-bone as an entrance. There was a prison, hospital, power station and school. All schools seemed to have 20 mile speed limits during school start and finish times and they actively encouraged children to cycle. It was a very quiet shopping centre and it seemed really cold. We warmed up in the one cafe we could find.

 

We left Peterhead heading towards blue skies with clouds behind us. Beside the road were fenced in sheep and we could have filled a duvet cover with all the wool rolling around the fields and caught in the wire fences. A lot of the sheep, we noticed later, hadn’t been shorn and they moulted instead.

 

It was half a mile on the main road then through Kinloch with a tiny loch, then St. Fergus. In a cut hayfield we watched a pair of hares, one froze almost beside us. Bob managed a photo despite them “haring off!”

 

There was nowhere to stop till St Combs, where we stopped at the Tufted Duck Hotel. This looked unlikely for a break as it was very smart and modern with marquees going up. The friendly staff were, however, happy to serve us with lunch which came with homemade chilli bread pro gratis. It was getting increasingly hard to find comfort stops.

 

We rode along a speed bumped track by a golf course in the dunes and by large houses looking like corporate lodgings. Then we passed more golf courses and then little streets, with washing drying on the sea side instead of gardens like in Cruden Bay.

 

Fraserburgh was the next place of note. We stopped mainly for the loos, which you had to use when you found them as there just aren’t too many. A little building for the Ladies or Gents was accessed by inserting a 20p in the outside door. A blue light, possibly ultra- violet, lit the inside and we wondered if this was to make up for the lack of sunshine for a lot of the year- A good idea?

We later found this was to prevent drug addicts from seeing veins for injections.

It was too late for the Heritage museum which was to close at 4pm. The tearoom in the Lighthouse museum had already closed and it was much too late also to visit the Kinnaird Head lighthouse that is built into the structure of the 16th century castle, now the museum. We were able to go around the museum itself for £9 between us and I was left feeling ripped off. It was full of old configurations of glass making up the various “lights” We found the films soporific due to the low lighting and indecipherable Scottish words.

 

On the way out of the town we passed a lovely harbour with boats packed fore to aft. The little fishing boats looked chunky and unusual. Waves crashed over the rocks as we rode beside the sea on the cycle path. The light through the waves turned them emerald green.

 

We arrived at the Masons Arms at the fringe of Rosehearty. Up the road we spied a castle ruin and another dove cote.The bike went in the car port. We hoped for a better night sleep. The food was micro-waved here and the worst of the week. There was no competition anywhere. Once a flourishing harbour its fleet is now based at Fraserburgh and the village is quite empty of facilities.

 

We walked up to the ruin, Pitsligo Castle, preserved by a local trust though we did think the “for sale” notice referred to this charming building. Would be a lovely setting for weddings!

 

Comfy beds with sky TV but again late night drinking made an early bed difficult. We had found a basic shop in the village and had bought a few things for breakfast to supplement the bits left for us in the fridge in the guest’s kitchen. You can have cooked breakfast for an extra fee, but the staff don’t start until 9am.