Migvie Church

Be careful what you wish for, says the old adage.
Yesterday was so cold, any thing warmer was welcomed; today we got the warmer temperatures but they came girding the hills with low mist and leaving the thawing ground sodden and muddy.

As the day progressed, the mist descended lower and lower until it reached the fields and the world was cocooned in a moist blanket.
Even the cattle looked disgruntled and wet standing huddled in fields of glaur, no doubt wondering what the weather would think up next and when they would get their next feed of silage; only the sheep moved, nibbling at any available grass.


It was a day for the car for our hosts and us, with a proposed visit to the tiny but beautiful Migvie Church near Tarland, a village close to Aboyne.

His Lordship and I have cycled there twice, so it might have been assumed we knew where we were going. Not so; we did a circuitous tour along roads and lanes that became increasingly foreign to us, signposted with names not easily found on the road map, but more by luck than good guidance we chanced upon it eventually, up a very muddy track from the Logie Coldstone road.

From the outside it looks more like a stone cottage than a church, albeit with mossy gravestones outside; but once the heavy wooden door is opened and the light switches on, the inside is transformed into the blip above, a modern space with three striking stained glass windows and a carved stone centre font.
Everytime we come we are amazed at how beautiful it is and how simplicity can provide the same powerful reaction as does the grandest cathedral. The modernisation was conceived and the work carried out by local artisans.

It was warmer outside than inside, but feeling in need of some lunch, we managed to navigate back to a tea room at Dinnet, where we had soup and Balmoral bread while sitting beside a log fire.
It seemed a fitting end to the unplanned mini tour of Royal Deeside.

One of the many sayings inscribed on the walls was one that I would love to believe: If death is the end, then life is absurd.