Moray Coast, Day 6: Buckie to Cullen

September 10, 2016

Our final walking day also came in stages, the first of which was to get back to Buckie.

First we waited for the bus.

Then went through Portgordon again.

Then we got off the bus in Buckie. I jaywalked; Orhan did not.

And then we walked, toward the port...

...past the port...

...and on out of town.

More seals!

More birds!

More beach!

More... wait. Bears? In Scotland? Not since the 9th or 10th century.

More coastline!

Us!

Into a rocky section, possibly the kind of coastline I love the most.

Birds, birds, birds.

The obligatory golf course. I asked a golfer how often balls go sailing off the cliff here. She said it's actually quite rare.

Oh, look, another beautiful secluded beach (three angles):

And then we saw Findochty, our planned lunch stop. (The person who took the picture of us earlier recommended a place.)

Down into town with a nice view of the harbor.

And the view from lunch.

Dev practiced his boat-steering skills while we ate.

Maybe my perspective was influenced by being rested and full of food and tea, but I thought the Portknockie harbor was especially pretty.

Also, a place for deep thought.

And photography. Here Orhan is engaged in one of his new hobbies: taking pictures of words that are good in Scrabble but only used in regular speech and writing in Scotland.

And on out town.

Scottish houses often have names. This one's name is less typically geographical than the usual "Seaview" or "Rosebriar" or Gaelic name,

After leaving town, we were treated to another stretch of gorgeous rocky coast and sheltered little beaches.

Also, a thoughtful bench.

Kayakers!

Rocks!

A sign shaped like.. I don't know. A very skinny whale tail?

More views!

More fields!

Views and fields, and Portknockie in the distance.

In Portknockie, the signs became interesting and important again. Note that these houses are part of Portknockie, and most certainly NOT a mile away.

Here is the harbor, another pretty view:

And there, at the end of the picture, is the outskirts of town.

Here are the outskirts close up, including a picture of the street sign for the optimistically-named Commercial Road.

And the rest of Portknockie is here. This will be important later.

Orhan spent some time patting this boat.

Once outside of town, we resumed our cliff-top walk past more gorgeous rocks and beaches. (Can you guess which rock is most popular with the birds? I bet you can.)

After a few more minutes of walking we came to the feature attraction of this stretch of coast, Bow Fiddle Rock:

I took pictures of Dev and the rock, and Orhan took pictures of Dev's relatives on the rock.

It was even more magnificent than the pictures show.

But what about Portknockie and its signs? Why did I say to remember them? Well, because of this:

In particular, this opening line:

Portknockie's best known? What do they think Portknockie is, a Texas-sized region of Scotland? Even with time to stop and pat a boat, and even moving at the slow pace my health required, the total time from our entering Portknockie to our first seeing the rock was only 24 minutes. I mean, granted, there are a lot of nice rocks, but to say this is Portknockie's "best known" is, I think, the very definition of damning with faint praise.

Or is it? Maybe not, as later pictures will suggest.

After Bow Fiddle Rock we kept following the cliff top for a while, admiring this fishing boat.

Cullen appeared in the distance.

Then the path down to it appeared...

...and down we went...

...past what we assumed must be Cullen's Best Known Rock Formation.

It was no Bow Fiddle Rock, but it was nice in its own humble way.

As we continued on our way from the outskirts of Cullen toward the beach and then town, though...

...we discovered to our surprise that we were stick in Portknockie.

This, we assume, is Portknockie's Best Known Well.

This raised the question, when we got to the next featured site (St. Duane's Den)...

...was St. Duane actually Portknockie's Best Known Hermit?

According to some rock climbers, the cave is in Cullen, but can we be sure?

Even as we emerged onto the beach, were were still in Portknockie?

Is that Portknockie's Best Known Strip of Sand?

Fortunately, even if we didn't know where we were, we knew where were going, and even what to do: the Moray Coast guide said to "stride out across the wide sands of Cullen Bay," so we did.