Friday, 25 September 2015

Coastwalk

Aberdeen → Bridge of Don

fittie-butandben.jpg Distance: 4.88 miles
Ascent: 33 metres
Duration: 1 hour 38 minutes

The Fittie Squares
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Last year I saw a BBC documentary about the "Fittie Squares": a two-hundred year-old purpose-built fishing community at the mouth of the River Dee (the area's official name is Footdee), built as three inward-looking squares of small stone houses with a Mission Hall at their heart.

Since then I've been looking forward to this, the second of two walks today.

fittie-mission-hall.jpgThe Squares were everything I'd hoped they'd be: beautiful, charming and functional. We were keen not to hang around too long: they're not a tourist attraction, they're people's homes.

The documentary also tells the story of how Big Business in the form of oil resulted in the destruction of Fittie's twin village at Old Torry. ("Global oil giant Shell, already leasing a plot nearby, had threatened to leave Aberdeen if the land at Old Torry was not made available to them".)

The parallels with Trump's demands on the land and sea near his golf course seem all too clear.

After Footdee we were on the prom the rest of the way round to Bridge of Don where we started this morning's walk. Halfway we passed a man in hiking boots and a kilt. If the squares wanted to be left alone by the tourists, I got the feeling that this gentleman didn't.

Posted by pab at 19:11 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!