Our Scotland and England Adventure: Day Twelve (28 August)

We returned to Lossiemouth today, not for ice cream, not for the beach view, not for the considerable quaintness of its harbour,

but for a feast of a Scottish breakfast at the wonderful, I-missed-it-as-soon-as-we-left Harbour Tearooms (which does much more than just tea):
Anne and Bob both went for the full Scottish: a rack of toast and a plate brimming with (going clockwise) tomatoes, eggs, a scone, black pudding, sausage, and (wait for it) haggis.
Bob and I had sampled black pudding before at Spitalfields market, but today was our first taste of haggis (Bob hadn't tried it on his previous two visits to Scotland) and I'm happy to report that I have no idea what the fuss is all about, at least in the negative sense. It had a lovely texture, nice oaty flavour, and really went well with eggs. After much consideration, Jim and I ended up going for the same thing too--smoked haddie (haddock) with runny poached eggs, tomatoes, and a plateful of soft, buttered bread, perfect for soaking up all those delicious juices.
The only thing wrong with my breakfast is that there wasn't twice as much of it! It's been a long time since Bob and I have had breakfast out, and today's was a spectacular treat. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving east along the Burghead coast, passing through quaint fishing village after fishing village, including Buckie, Findochty, and Portknockie:





The old railway arches gave Cullen an especially picturesque touch


and Jim and Anne had another favourite ice-cream shop here, so they forced us to have cones--what an ordeal! After we got back into the car, we saw a few nice dogs amongst the pretty scenery on our way through Portsoy, Banff (not the Canadian Banff!), and Macduff:




Gardenstown was lovely



and we had a peek at the neighbouring village of Crovie
from the Gardenstown harbour. You can't drive in Crovie--there's only a pedestrian path by the row of seaside cottages, and cars have to be left at the top of the village, with locals and visitors alike walking down to the sea. Although we spent the day wandering through villages, the next one was our only destination of the day: Pennan. The winding road down to Pennan is very steep and prone to mudslides like the one that closed the road until a few days ago.

The rows of cottages along the harbour are lovely, and the whole area has an isolated feel doubly compounded by the high cliffs behind the cottages and the fact that most of the cottages aren't occupied year-round.

If you're looking for a quaint address, how about this one?
We could see evidence of the recent mudslide on the exteriors of some of the cottages, and the location is indeed one that must be nervewracking for Pennan's homeowners.

But, wait, maybe you're wondering why we had this particular fishing village as a destination, when all we did today was drive along a coast full of such places? Well, it all comes down to a film. One of Bob's favourite films is Local Hero, which was partly filmed in Pennan, and he's wanted to visit ever since. Pennan's red phone box is an important part of the film, and although the film company put a phone box in a different location along the harbour, the remaining phone box is where all the Local Hero fans get their photo taken, so here's Bob, in the village he's been dreaming about for as long as I've known him:
A lovely place, Pennan was worth the excuse to make it our destination for the day!
Instead of turning around and heading for home, Anne decided we should get to the end of this stretch of coast (we had come this far, after all), and so our final stop was Fraserburgh, whose harbour was filled with enormous ships:

We stopped at the lighthouse that pointed north toward nothing but ocean, but I wanted a photo of the foghorn just in front of the lighthouse ("You know, most people take a picture of the lighthouse!" Bob said, and I suppose he's right):
Something about the horn, aimed at the diminishing horizon, seemed to sum up the day's sights, with fishing villages adapting (some more successfully than others) to the decline of the fishing industry, and understandably so--as with all of our time in Scotland, our afternoon along this quiet living-postcard of a coast left us with the distinct desire to see more villages, more coastline, more of the sea lapping at tiny cottages.