For this, our third day, we crammed rather a lot of interesting places into it!
I began the day with something of a scare.
As I had a twin room, I left my rucksack sitting up on the bed next to mine the night before, and, being shortsighted, this led to a bit of a startle when I woke up the next morning as it looked like something was watching me!
After surviving the vicious bagmonster's clutches, we intended to head for the town of Cromarty, then onto the renowned dolphin-spotting site of Chanonry Point, but got distracted a few times along the way...
Our first stop was Newhall Point, looking out across Udale Bay and the Cromarty Firth towards Invergordon and a seemingly endless supply of in progress and half dismantled old oil rigs.
Bizarrely, Invergordon appears to be a stopoff point for certain cruise liners, and it was the oddest of juxtapositions with these hefty industrial behemoths next to an equally big luxury cruise ship!
(they carry about 4000 people! 😵)
This one was the Caribbean Princess, and docking here must have been somewhat unexpected. 😂
It's not often that you get close to oil rigs - or indeed, cruise ships! - and they're really rather striking, especially when lowered down like this. I often wondered how they get them out to sea, and well, shockingly, despite their bulk, they actually float and are towed out to their final destination, where the platform is raised up the legs!
We did a little beachcombing here, but it was pretty sparse in terms of finds sadly.
Still en route to Cromarty, we pulled over to photograph a church which, according to a nearby sign, housed some medieval gravestones!
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| Apparently the steps there are 'recycled' gravestones! |
Whilst hnting down the old stones, I spied an unusual crop in a nearby field.
?????????
We stopped here on a whim but found ourselves fascinated by the history of the place. The old 18th century church was in a terrible state, totally derelict and left to rot until a couple of years ago when the Kirkmichael Trust raised funds and completely renovated it, though more as a visitor centre than a place of worship. It's only a wee kirk but you can tell that so much love and dedication has gone into bringing it back to life.
There were gravestones from several hundred years of local history, all with their own character.
My favourites were the 18th century ones, as they seem to have had something of an obsession with skulls and other symbols of mortality back then as they were everywhere!
Some were almost identical in terms of carving so it must have been a standard or popular design.
Most of them seem to relate to the good old 'Memento Mori' (latin: "remember that you have to die)
According to various sources, all the symbols directly relate to death and the transition to the afterlife - not hugely subtle to have a bloody great skull and bones on your tomb but never mind. The 18th century wasn't renowned for being understated.
Interestingly enough, whilst trawling the internet for more information, this article on the symbolism of human skulls had this snippet which, while a couple of hundred years before these were carved, (so the meaning may have changed) I found rather amusing!
'In Elizabethan England, The Death's-Head Skull, usually a depiction without the lower jawbone, was emblematic of bawds, rakes, Sexual Adventurers and prostitutes; The term Deaths-Head was actually parlance for these rakes, and most of them wore half-skull rings to advertise their station, either professionally or otherwise. The original Rings were wide silver objects, with a half-skull decoration not much wider than the rest of the band; This allowed it to be rotated around the finger to hide the skull in polite company, and to reposition it in the presence of likely conquests.'
Apparently this gravestone was for a widow who lost her husband only a couple of years after they were married. :(
I found the medieval stones round the back of the site, all laid out in a row.
Like most of the stones of that age, the sandstone has been well weathered by the elements but the level of detail in the carving is still clear.
While carved many centuries after the Picts were on the go, their influence is clear in the knotwork and cross design.
Inside the church, which was pretty spartan in decor, lay this beautiful modern reproduction of the stone above in the local red sandstone. (the one above was accidentally photographed upside down, lol)
Taking pity on my poor mum, (who had stayed in the car as we'd 'only be a minute or two' 🙈) we finally made it to Cromarty, where we apparently couldn't escape the rigs.
If you ignored them then it was a really lovely spot!
We had a good long walk in search of some lunch, but most places were either closed, busy or only served coffee, like this amazing bookshop/coffee shop which allowed and encouraged patrons to sign the walls and ceilings!
We eventually found somewhere just as our feet were ready to give out. Cromarty was actually a really interesting place to explore, and I think we'd all like to return there at some point to do it justice!
We browsed through a quirky little antique shop but held onto our pennies, though this fantastic print had me tempted! All I could think of was the scene in the Blackadder the Third episode 'Sense and Senility' where Prince George gets acting lessons and is told to widen his stance.
'Keanrick: Why, your very posture tells me, "Here is a man of true greatness."
Blackadder: Either that or "Here are my genitals, please kick them."
We also bought some quality punnage in a cheese..
(I got some 'Old Goat' instead, I don't like blue cheese)
...then paid a visit to the Cromarty Courthouse - now a museum...
...which was just as well as I found myself locked up for puns against humanity!
Luckily they let me go. :P
The Cromarty Lighthouse round the corner is no longer used as such, and is now a field station for Aberdeen University. It was really nice but not exactly in the same league as Tarbat Ness!
We found a nice wee pottery and shop hidden down one of the side streets. I bought a tiny tile 'second' with lots of little handprints on it which I thought would come in handy for Max and Juno's place as a piece of artwork or something. It was only £3 so I couldn't resist!
There was also a resident dog there, so y'know, bonus points for puppers.
After all that we inevitably made our way back to the sea.
The two promontories that jut out either side of Cromarty and on the opposite shore at Nigg are known as the Sutors - Scots for 'shoemakers' apparently, and according to legend were workbenches for giants, who threw each other tools across the firth!
The beach was brilliant for pottery and glass, though most of it was plain white or bits of tile, but as at Portmahomack, it was all perfectly smooth and well weathered. I found my first glass bottle stopper which Dad had to totally outdo later on with a nice white ceramic one.
The harbour wasn't quite as picturesque as many of the others in the area, particularly with the rigs looming behind them.
That said, it did have its own particular charm, and plenty of things to photograph.
My friend pointed out that this next rock looks a bit like a bird with its head back!
Due to the geography of Easter Ross with all its firths and sticky out bits of land, it would have been far quicker to get from Portmahomack to Cromarty by getting on the wee ferry for five minutes across the firth at Nigg rather than the 40 minute drive around the peninsula and over bridges. That said, we weren't keen on paying the somewhat eye watering fee to cross! It's a brilliant service for the area but we like exploring the local area whenever we go on holiday and if we'd taken the ferry we'd have missed out on many of the things we'd seen that day.
Bidding a fond farewell to Cromarty, (and a few cats!) we called in briefly at Montrose Cathedral for a quick photo, then it was on to Chanonry Point!
While they aren't one of my most favourite animals, I've always longed to see dolphins. Every time we go to the sea I've always panned the horizon hoping for a glimpse but nothing has ever been forthcoming. When staying up with my cousins near Elgin, we often go to the Scottish Dolphin Centre at Spey Bay, where dolphins are sighted regularly, though apparently never when we turned up. 😢
Chanonry Point sits at an advantageous place on the Cromarty Firth, jutting out into the oncoming tide and offers one of the best if not the best place in the UK to see dolphins from land as they often come within a few metres of the shore, playing and hunting down fish as the tide turns.
They say they can be seen there at any time but the best is about an hour before/after a rising tide, which at this time of year was around 5pm. Knowing that the small car park would fill up quick, we arrived there at about 4pm and waited for the excitement to begin.
The lighthouse there was very photogenic and reminded me strongly of the one we saw at Cromarty.
The number of people on the beach steadily increased, obviously hoping like ourselves that they'd get a good view.
As time passed, with nary a sign, we abandoned the bench we'd been hoarding and went for a wander along the beach itself.
The beachcombing pickings were relatively sparse but I nabbed a few nice pieces of seaglass.
At last, movement!
Nope, just a seal. 😑
The only other wildlife that came close was this juvenile Herring gull, who ventured exceedingly close to everyone, obviously on the lookout for edibles.
He was no dolphin, but he certainly had charisma!
As the hours ticked by, the light began to fade and the beach slowly emptied of people, with only a determined few remaining.
A few more seals had joined the ranks of the first one, eliciting the occasional but ultimately disappointing thrill when a dark shape emerged unexpectedly from the water.
I spotted the couple above looking disappointed at the lack of activity, so when I was walking past in search of more seaglass, I told them that 'even if you don't see any dolphins, at least there's a pretty spectacular sunset behind you' and the woman actually gasped when she took a look!
It got even more dramatic as the minutes passed!
Sadly, the drama only extended to the skies, and the sea was utterly bereft of activity.
Even the seals seemed bored.
Eventually we had to call it a night at Chanonry Point - we'd lost the light and there was still no sign of any dolphin activity to speak of. We saw a handful of seals, I witnessed a fish randomly shoot vertically from the water at one point but that was literally it. 😥 By the time we got back to the house it was 9pm, so we had a rather hastily cobbled together tea of a cup-a-soup, bread and cheese and some rather nice sausage rolls.
I was incredibly disappointed as I'd really been pinning my hopes on Chanonry being the place I'd finally see some dolphins, and as it was considerably further away than the other places we were planning to visit that week, I knew it was a one-time thing, at least for this trip anyway.
Still, the sea was a big place and we wouldn't be staying away from it for long, so there was still a chance of seeing something elsewhere...tune in next time to see if we did or not! :P
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