Thermal

And back! On Sunday we dragged our dusty walking boots out of the cupboard, threw them in the car and drove up to Cullen on the Morayshire coast. Even more amazingly we then got them out of the boot, and started walking, on the 5 mile circular route from Cullen, up the disused railway to Portknockie and back via the cliff path and beach. This is Cullen:

The railway viaduct is one of three flying over the town, built purely because the local land owner didn’t want the railway running across her land. Fantastic pieces of engineering, they were used for less than 100 years. Still, they made a great path out of town, with views over the village, coast and links golf course.

We had been walking all of 10 minutes when Patrick proclaimed himself ‘hungry’ (this was around 10:30) and wanted his picnic now. This hideous apparition was the result of saying no:

We threw him a bar of chocolate and hurried on. Portknockie ( or Port Gnocchi as Steph insisted on calling it) was a nice little fishing village clinging to the coast, and we sat on a bench overlooking the harbour eating the afore mentioned picnic.

You can probably see that the water is crystal clear, and with the warm sun and lack of wind, we could have sat there all day.

We carried on round the coast to the local landmark, Bow Fiddle Rock, so named because it is supposed to resemble  a bow used to play a violin.

I think it looks more like Battlestar Galactica myself, what do you reckon Pinksy? (Seen the finale yet, want to know what happens?). This whole part of the coast is amazing geology wise, being formed (apparently) from ‘folded Quartzite’ which looks like it’s been lifted up and tilted on it’s side. As the sea wears away the layers in between, it gives rise to features like Bow Fiddle Rock, caves and other sights like this:

An amazing rock arch at the start of the beach that leads back to Cullen. We spent a while hopping over rock pools, shells, the odd dead seagull and the boys attempted to remove most of the beach back into the sea. A nice walk, and a pleasant way to spend a Sunday.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 4:26 am and is filed under Life, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.