An Early Birthday in the Silver City

04/10/24

From the mountains to the city. Our next destination was Aberdeen, named the Silver City in early tourist literature because of the sparkles in the granite stones of many buildings. We’d been told not to expect much. “There isn’t a lot to see” said one helpful soul when we mentioned that we would be visiting, “I wouldn’t bother”. Having visited I would disagree, there is plenty to see and do here.

We made our way from the Angus Glens via a farm shop cafe where we stopped for an early afternoon treat of tea and cake. We’d hoped to pick up some supplies but they didn’t have a great selection of fresh produce and we are banned from buying any more chutneys and jams until our current stash is properly depleted.

Dunnottar Castle

Dunnottar Castle is a very dramatic castle on a headland between Stonehaven and Aberdeen. It’s history goes back years, possibly to a time when an earlier Pictish fort, which stood on a peninuslar further north, became damaged due to erosion and was moved to Dunnottar.

William Wallace was claimed to have captured the castle from the English in the 13th century and burned many of the soldiers alive in the church –  how much of this is English propaganda is unclear. Following the destruction by Wallace most of the buildings we saw were constructed in the 14th century. The castle was granted a ‘licence to crenellate’ and then expanded in the 16th century before falling victim to the unrest of the reformation. The ‘Honours of Scotland’, which we saw at Edinburgh Castle, were hidden from Oliver Cromwell at Dunnottar.

After deliberating whether to stay at Stonehaven and walk to Dunnottar Castle, we instead decided to just drive there and then move onto Aberdeen. We turned up and found the coach and motorhome parking coned off, but managed to sneak in alongside a tour bus. There is a short walk from the parking area to the coast where you get a magnificent view of the castle. The walls and buildings stand on a flat topped peninsular whose cliffs drop precipitously down to the sea on three sides. On the fourth side the cliff meets a low grassy saddle that allows people to cross from the mainland.

We ended up deciding that the castle was best seen from the clifftops, especially after realising that we couldn’t get in for free using our Historic Scotland membership. We got a great perspective of it’s defensive position by descending steps and then climbing back up again to the castle gate, by which time we felt we might as well pay up for entry.

Park-up in Aberdeen

Our first call on getting to Aberdeen was an LPG re-fill from the Shell garage on the north side of the city. Filled with the fossil fuel that keeps us warm and allows us to cook, we relaxed a little. We knew we had been on the verge of running out.

We chose to park on the Esplanade, avoiding the clean air zone in the centre of the city and deciding that none of the public transport options really worked for us. It’s an odd spot to park, a long stretch of sea front that has multiple personalities from golf courses to industrial estates via amusements and venues. We chose to park at the end closest to the harbour, among multiple food vans and behind some industrial units. At the end of the esplanade a public toilet provided our toilet cassette with a little respite. I have to say it was a very nice public toilet, it had an attendant, was scrupulously clean and had a sort of faded grandeur. Possibly an odd thing to say about a toilet.

Aberdeen Esplanade

We spent two nights here in a noisy environment with the clanks and crashes from the harbour and background white noise from waves, generators and ships. After two nights we were very ready to leave for somewhere a little quieter, but it was something we could put up with for the benefit of proximity to the city.

On the evening of our arrival we popped out to find some wetsuit gloves. Our sea swims in the cold North Sea had made me realise I needed some gloves. Getting my hands cold is the thing that holds me back from entering the water. We found a decathlon and popped in for a browse, hoping to also pick up some cycling gear, unfortunately they were in the middle of a restock and cycling gear was in short supply but we did manage to pick up the gloves. We took ourselves for an evening walk along the esplanade which was very busy, many of the food vans opening up for their evening service and starting to build up queues.

An early Birthday

I tasked Paul with some research on food options for the following day and he came up with the Silver Darling. A little more high end then I had been anticipating, it served a lot of lovely looking seafood. A bit of a chat and we had agreed that it would be an early birthday meal for me as we didn’t know exactly where we would be on my birthday. It was obviously a busy restaurant because we had to opt for a 5:30 dinner, anything later was booked. But that was fine, it meant we could have a big breakfast and then we wouldn’t need to eat out for lunch.

Enjoying a Birthday treat

A day in Aberdeen City

We spent the following day exploring Aberdeen. It was definitely a more interesting place than we had anticipated.

We started by visiting Footdee, or Fittee – depending on your preference – the origins of the name are a little confused, some people think it’s named for the ‘Foot of the Dee’ in reference to the river which joins the sea here, some think it’s named after St Fittick. Whichever option you choose to believe, this is an interesting bit of Aberdeen’s history. Originally a fishing village, the current houses were built in 1809 as a planned development to improve the housing of the fishing community. The single story houses with their backs protectively to the sea were then improved and added to over time. Some now have a second story and dormer windows. Sheds and outbuildings sit in the squares between the houses. Nowadays they have mostly been sold off to private ownership and there seems to have been a consensus that a certain eccentric artistic style would be adopted.

To get to the city we walked around the harbour, it’s great hulking ships and ferries and all of the associated super sized materials made it an experience in it’s own right. The nearby Maritime museum had a good view of the harbour and a variety of exhibits about shipping, fishing (and whaling) and offshore industries. The building itself is pretty interesting – a modern central building with a circular atrium that joins the 16tth century Provost Ross’s house with a church.

We spent a few hours wandering the city streets, particularly the seemingly endless Union Street. The impressive granite buildings that look as though they might have been constructed yesterday,. This includes ‘the second largest granite building in the world’ – an accolade that seems a little underwhelming but the buildings of Marischal College were pretty impressive (the biggest granite building is actually in Spain. not India or Saudi as I imagined it might be).

The recently re-opened Union Terrace Gardens were a sunken haven in the city centre. From here we could see the ‘Triple Kirks’, a listed building that was built in response to a schism in the Church of Scotland. One building with one spire was built to house three separate congregations, the spire was built in red sandstone as a deliberate contrast to the granite of the city. After falling into disrepair, a recent development was built around it.

We also sought out some of the many street art displays in the city, much of the art has been generated through the annual Nuart festival. It certainly helps to enliven a city that, in the wrong light, could be considered drab and grey rather than sparkling and silver.