Ferryden and Scurdie Ness

5th March 2022

After an hour or so in Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre and a cuppa in The Coffee House, an old smithy, time for a walk along the shore to Scurdie Ness lighthouse, my sister collects driftwood for her crafts, driftwood mirrors, lamps and signs and she’d heard there was lots of it along this shore.

We drove into Ferryden, past Diamond Lil’s, next time into the small car park on the shore. We’re going to come back for a wander and check out Lils another time.

There’s a good solid path all the way to the lighthouse, a narrow road in truth, the lighthouse keeper’s cottages are a private home now.

All along the path there are the remains of wartime defences, our coast is littered with them and I find them all fascinating.

This one put me in mind of the wartime books by Spike Milligan, standing alone in his foxhole, bored so, he counted his nose!

One of those lucky days again, the sun shining, a cold fresh wind blowing, making it a perfect walking day, in the right attire 🙂

I’m not sure if this is something that has started due to lockdown or before but, all over the UK you’ll find painted stones, to bring a bit of happiness and sharing to us all. Some are meant to be picked up, relocated, photographed and shared, I think it’s a great fun thing.

I did geo-caching for a while and loved it.

As you wind along the road, the view changes constantly, there are little rocky coves down at the shoreline and we hope to explore more of them in a future visit.

The two daymarks are fascinating in themselves, there’s nothing like history on a walk.

There were a couple of shots in this set that I just liked in black and white.

As we approached the lighthouse itself, the bay opened up and revealed a small sandy cove covered in driftwood! Paydirt!

Who can resist a lighthouse on a sunny day with blue skies as a backdrop?

Looking at the windows in the lighthouse itself, I’d say the owners still use it, living space?

I do love rusty remains. What was this? What was it a part of?

There were a few bits of rusty pipe, eyelets and red brick debris around, always makes me wonder?

We wandered down to the beach, bags in hand to gather up suitable driftwood. This old hut and a capstan, along with a rusty eyelet in the rocks again had me pondering. There’s a little information about the capstan but, were they all related? Read about Scurdie Ness and more in this article by Gayle Ritchie from The Courier 

Scurdie Ness is well explained in Wikipedia.

Behind this little beach, covered in driftwood and now rusting well, is the old capstan, apparently used to assist stranded vessels to the shore.

I’d forgotten to get closer to the capstan, I wanted a shot of it with the lighthouse in the background but, next time 🙂

The coast path continues around the headland and on to Lunan Bay, with its beautiful beach and Red Castle on the headland. Another walk, for another day, this is soon to become the area we live in, so looking forward to that day.

On this day, I was using my little Lumix DMC-TZ100 and Samsung phone, all the shots here are from the camera. 🙂