cruden bay

long day today, and unexpected in part, too...

the plan was to head north, final destination the lighthouse museum at fraserburgh (my choice of the week - unfortunately, as it turned out). so we pottered up the coast road, watching potato picking and the sea - and the birds. having seen skeins of geese the last few days we knew there were a lot of geese around - then we turned a corner on a random little road and were greeted with the sight of thousands of the noisy buggers on a field by the road. so dad pulled in and we watched them (and snapped them, tho not terribly well) for a little while, til they decided enough was enough and took wing, deafening us as they went. awesome, in the proper sense.

a little further up and we hit cruden bay - despite living on the coast ourselves, thus knowing that all picturesque places are not as they seem, we did a collective 'ah!' at how lovely it was. drive along the harbour, flask of coffee out :-) i was distracted by oystercatchers on the rocks, but the main event was young gulls diving for herring - the beach must shelve pretty steeply to have them do it so close to shore, fascinating to watch tho. then it was back up the road on the trail of more birds, at one of the hides on the rspb loch of strathbeg site.

where we got a phonecall from the hotel reception desk... nutshell: somewhere along the line the booking had been screwed up and they were expecting us to check out at 2pm while we were expecting to be checking out tomorrow... at 1pm, this was not good news... so, no fraserburgh and onto the main road at a rate of knots to rescue our belongings and find us new digs. thankfully there was a very nice holiday inn a two-minute drive away with empty rooms :-)

and on the bright side it offered us a couple of hours to do a garden we'd not thought we'd have time for, at kildrummy. not at its best when we stopped by, thanks to the bridge being in need of repairs and under scaffolding. but it was interesting and a nice hour or so in the fresh air after a rather tense couple of hours. again, another one to revisit in spring - and since they appear to be doing a lot of forward planning, give it a couple of years. nice spot tho.

----------

le backblippage pour le trip c'est worthalook from:here.