Julia and Jasper do like to be beside the seaside
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IN the second of her reports on her local walks with her trusted sidekick Jasper, Julia King reflects on a coastal wonderland.
Jasper sports his best red bandana! His coat brushed and gleaming, locks flowing, he looks quite the boy about town. We turn right from the house heading down Market Street towards the Aquarium, or at least we do after a momentary tussle because, for reasons best known to himself, Jasper always prefers to turn left (which leads to another Quarantine Walk, for another day). I remind him that he does like this walk and, after a bit of tugging on my part, he finally acquiesces.
There then follows a progress down the road so slow that you would be forgiven for thinking Jasper has been swapped for some similar
looking but more elderly and far less frenetic dog. He stops and sniffs every few paces and deposits numerous personal messages, embarrassingly on people's gateposts and walls. Surely his supply must run out soon? But I read somewhere that when your dog does this you must let him. It is his walk, not yours, and this is his way of interpreting his world. So I curb my impatience and wait, whilst admiring his enviable bladder control.
From the Macduff Aquarium onwards, heading along Low Shore with its solid stone former fishermen's cottages, towards Tarlair, Jasper regains his sense of mission and purpose and our pace accelerates to its usual (for me!) almost run. To our left is a pebbly beach so unlike the vast open sandy expanses of Banff Beach, just a mile away in the opposite direction. The tide is receding and revealing rocky crags and secret rockpools, and seagulls sun themselves on newly exposed stacks and boulders.
At the top of High Shore we stop to admire the view back over Macduff, to Banff, then the headland that conceals the village of Whitehills behind it, and rolling fields of bright yellow rape beyond - a far gentler landscape than that towards which we are now heading. We press on through a deserted playing field and children's playground and leave all habitation behind as we hit the road leading to Tarlair, the 1930s-built open air swimming pool, sadly no longer in use.
The road to Tarlair winds downwards very steeply and I know, from experience, that Jasper's pace will accelerate accordingly making me highly likely to plunge base over apex as we hurtle through the descent. So I have devised an alternate route which has led to some wonderful (and some not so wonderful!) discoveries. A short path to our right leads to some scrubland where, blessed relief, I can let Jasper off the lead. He's duly launched (on the scent of rabbits and pheasants) like an exocet missile and I continue on across the rough ground to the edge of the Royal Tarlair Golf Course.
I have always admired the hardy types who, in pre-virus days, would play on this cliff top, often windswept, course in all weathers.
Many a golfball must sure fly straight out into the seething waters of the Moray Firth directly below since the course extends right to the cliff edge in many places. But the Clubhouse is now closed and the golfers in quarantine (at the time of writing) so that we may tramp along the cliff top free from the risk of encountering flying golfballs or irate golfers.
The view along the coastline from this high vantage point, in the Fraserburgh direction, is simply stunning; imposing cliffs, craggy in the extreme with many secret rocky inlets where I would doubt man's foot has ever fallen. Gardenstown (or Gamrie in local parlance), the next settlement along the coast, nestles into its bay and is completely concealed from view, but beyond it Crovie, a small former fishing community, one of the 'clearance' villages consisting of just one ribbon of cottages clinging on beneath a severe cliff face, is just discernable in the far distance, its bright cottages a brief glint in the corner of the eye in the bright sunlight.
We follow a rough track along the top of the cliffs around the perimeter of the golf course and look down from on high to the huge open, pyramid-shaped 'needle rock' through which the waves surge, and the tranquil pools of the Tarlair complex below us. I did this part of the walk once with my daughter-in-law's father, Ian, who remembered attending an open-air concert given by Jethro Tull (one of my favourite 70s rock/folk bands). What a wonderful setting and, apparently, the acoustics were superb with the surrounding cliffs creating a deep bowl-like effect around which the sound reverberated gloriously.
Brought sharply back to reality, whilst I've been absent-mindedly taking a trip down memory lane Jasper has, literally, been down a drain! Which brings us to one of the overriding themes of this walk - mud!
Not your common or garden mud, but a thick, bright orange variety with the consistency of treacle. It has glugged and oozed its way underground, across the golf course from the farmland beyond, to emerge at the head of the cliffs to be dispersed in streamlets and underground surges. But there's been very little rain for weeks so the mud has massed and gathered, just waiting to lure a furry victim to its glutinous delights.
The vision before me is emerging from a hole in the ground, slathered in a thick sludge which has sealed its eyes. It is emitting a loud yelp of sheer and utter delight. He's having trouble hauling himself out of the hole, partly I suspect because he can't see, and partly due to suction, so I have to get down on hands and knees and pull him out, whereupon he shakes himself vigorously all over me before I have a chance to creak back into an upright position.
The only solution would seem to be to get us both down to the sea as quickly as possible. But no! He's left his ball in the drainage ditch and I know from past experience he would rather kill himself than fail to retrieve his ball, so in he plunges joyously once again, furiously churning up sludge and submerging himself completely in his frantic efforts to find his treasure.
I am becoming hoarse with shouting at him but he finally emerges triumphant, ball clenched between his teeth and, all fired up this time, has no trouble leaping out unaided and then scampers off at speed across one of the more finely manicured sections of the golf course, leaving behind him a sticky trail like some malevolent emanation from the mire. I stumble after him, cursing, as he bounds energetically through a lovely heather covered area which, although dangerously close to a sheer cliff edge, does have the advantage of wiping off a little of the mud.
From this precarious vantage point the beautiful Moray Firth coastine stretches out before us to the timeless massive somnolent sentinel of Troup Head, far on the horizon, home to Scotland's largest colony of gannets. But then the surprise! Directly below us lies the most perfect deserted cove. At the sight of this sandy inlet I literally catch my breath and the beautiful theme tune from the 1960s Robinson Crusoe TV series by Fabricio Jiminez starts playing through my head. The descent to this vision lay down a steep grassy path and Jasper bounces ahead in leaps and bounds, stopping now and then to check I'm following.
This wonderful beach (which I later find out is known to locals as the 'Salmon Howie') even has its own ave, a gaping open wound in the cliff face, but the first thing I notice upon hitting the sand is its complete peace and serenity and the feeling of well-being it instils.
Jasper plays happily in the wavelets, ashing away some of his mud, whilst I sit on a washed up log in the middle of the beach, pinching myself to ensure I'm not dreaming. Seabirds float contentedly on the gently receding tide and our oot/paw prints are the only ones marking a trail across the wet sand. This is the setting for every coastal adventure I've ever read, from Enid Blyton's Secrets of Spiggy Holes, through Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, to the smugglers and romance of Poldark. I can imagine Peter Pan's Captain Hook anchoring his pirate ship right here in front of me in the bay and confronting the crocodile, tick tock, tick tock!
But Jasper's off again, charging up a steep track between rocks and cliff face at the far end of the beach. Following him, I look back across our 'Crusoe' beach, which literally sparkles and glitters in the sunshine. Further ahead this coastal path becomes narrow, rocky and challenging in the extreme and out at sea stand great stacks of rock, broken away from the cliffs over aeons in time, which are now home to colonies of various types of seabird.
This vista feels ancient, mysterious, dangerous, probably largely unvisited by man and, though tempted (and the far more sure footed Jasper is keen), I decide it's wise to venture no further, especially since, in the event of an accident, no one actually knows where I am!
So reluctantly we retrace our steps. Infuriatingly, the now clean Jasper scampers ahead intent upon revisiting his glory hole. He seems to have no more difficulty charging up steep inclines than he does running down them, so that by the time I puff back up from the beach he's already crossed the golf course and immersed himself once more. He emerges once again, obviously feeling himself to be a God amongst dogs, but in reality an absolute abomination!
We take the track down the cliffside and descend into Tarlair, hoping we won't meet anyone in our current offensive state. I imagine the complex in its heyday, full of happy bathers and children playing. There were two seawater pools, one with slides, for swimming, one for boating and a small paddling pool. It closed in 1996 as the growing popularity of cheap foreign holidays together with the provision by councils of heated indoor pools, had led to a decline in the use of lidos.
But a local group, The Friends of Tarlair, now care for the site and are fundraising, planning and liaising with the council, with the aim of transforming the art deco pavillion into a cafe with outdoor activity space. There seems to be no intention to restore the pools for swimming however. Were we really so much hardier, way back when, unsoftened by the warm waters of the Med, or were our summers really so much warmer? Older residents of Macduff certainly remember with great affection whole days during school summer holidays spent in the pools at Tarlair.
Perversely Jasper cannot now be enticed into either the pools nor the sea for a wash. He has obviously decided his mud covering is simply too delectable. I throw his ball into the waves, normally a surefire ploy for him to follow and retrieve, but he just stands looking from the ball bobbing in the surf to me with a wonky-lipped expression that says 'you threw it in, you go and get it'. I wade in above my ankles to retrieve it....
So we head for home, dirty, dripping and dishevelled. I ring ahead to Mike and ask him to prepare 'Mud Daddy', a wonderful gismo sent to us by my son Matthew and his wife Iona for just such scenarios - a pump action portable dog shower!
We turn off the Tarlair road at the old small stone building that houses the chalybeate 'Well of Tarlair' and ascend yet another steep but grassy cliffside, covered in daffodils, leading us back onto the golf course.
Jasper propels himself effortlessly upwards and nonchalantly cocks a muddy leg over a clump of swaying daffodils whilst waiting for me to gasp my way to the top. As we wend our way wearily (in my case!) across the links, the flourish and swish of his tail and jaunty waggle of his bottom tell me that, today, this is Jasper's favourite walk!
Walk on the wildside with Julia and Jasper
