Fishing disaster 1881

We are home after our 2 nights away in the van. I was really taken with the commemorative sculptures above. The lower one was blipped in St Abbas, where we had a walk on Thursday and the top one yesterday in Eyemouth.

They depict the exact number of women and children left behind in each of the villages after the fishermen were drowned in a storm. Several villages in the SE of Scotland lost men, but Eyemouth was by far the worst affected, losing 129 men and 26 boats. Many boats ran aground trying to enter the poorly maintained harbour. Eyemouth was too poor to get the loan needed to improve the harbour, and the church took tithes from the fishermen.

Over 100 years later the EU match funded a scheme to regenerate declining fishing villages to create a deep-water extension to the harbour. What irony that we should visit on the day our current PM announced we’d have to prepare to leave EU with no trade deal.

Since getting back I’ve stewed the last of the windfall apples and made some apple cakes. Now I’m going to put my feet up and read my book