The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Still spellbound by St Cyrus
After the weather forecasts last weekend, the Doyenne and I were on hecklepins wondering what Monday and Storm Ciara would bring.
The Met Office had issued amber warnings of snow storms, high winds with gusts up to 60mph threatening blizzard conditions, torrential rain, flooding and disruption to transport. After all that, a plague of frogs and a pestilence of locusts would have been mild by comparison.
I had looked out the long johns and the cosy semmit, but Monday morning in our corner of The Mearns dawned clear and sunny. As my old father would have said, we live in a very favoured part of the country.
There was a fresh, brisk wind, but I’ve known it a lot worse. The siren song of the sea worked its magic on me and it would have been a crime to stay indoors. I bundled Inka into the car and set off to take him for a gallop on St Cyrus beach.
St Cyrus has been a favourite destination for four generations of the Whitson family for picnics, swimming and walks. Its sheer familiarity has had a hold on me all my life and takes me back time and again.
I took the familiar road over the Wide Open, one of the network of little roads that crisscross the spine of hills separating the Howe of the Mearns from the coastal plain.
Breasting the summit, St Cyrus Bay and Montrose Bay were laid out before me and I headed down to the car park at the St Cyrus SNH National Nature Reserve.
The sand dunes of St Cyrus beach to the east and high volcanic cliffs protecting the reserve from the prevailing west winds and weather have created a refuge for wildlife and plants and insects that probably has nothing comparable elsewhere in Scotland. It’s quiet just now while nature takes a winter break, but spring isn’t far off when rebirth and regeneration will start all over again.
Troubled waters
We walked over the dunes to the shore. The tide was out and I stood for a while at the high water mark watching surging lines of white rollers breaking relentlessly on the beach, spindrift whipped off their crests by the gusty, westerly wind.
To the south, the slim shape of Scurdie Ness lighthouse, which has blinked out its message of comfort to mariners since 1870, stood out conspicuously on the rocky headland at the mouth of the River South Esk, opposite Montrose.
Looking northwards up the coast, the tall spire of St Cyrus church rises prominently above the cliffs that the village is built on. It has been a daytime aid to navigation for generations of sailors and fishermen, and probably still is, despite modern satellite systems.
Inka was in his element, racing down to splash about in the water. As so often, he and I were the only ones on the beach, but footprints stretching away ahead of us in the damp sand showed that there had been walkers before us. Put me in mind of Robinson Crusoe finding Man Friday’s footprint in the sand of the island he thought was inhabited only by himself.
We walked back to the SNH visitor centre over the wooden bridge built by Gurkha soldiers as a community project in 1985. It replaced the one that had been used by generations of salmon fishers which was old and rickety with planks missing, but it had character and seniority.
The bridge crosses the old bed of the North Esk river which originally flowed northwards behind the dunes, entering the North Sea near the north end of St Cyrus bay.
In 1879, the route of the river estuary changed dramatically during a ferocious storm. Shifting sand blocked the original channel, the flooded river breached the dunes and the river changed its course to today’s outfall.
Life saving
I wonder how many visitors realise that the visitor centre used to be a lifeboat station housing a lifeboat principally for the benefit of the salmon fishers which launched into the river?
Frustratingly, I can’t find any information about how often the lifeboat was launched or how many lives the crew saved in its relatively short lifetime. But it was encouraging to see two dog bowls filled with fresh water to save the lives of daft dogs like Inka who still haven’t learned that drinking seawater makes them thirsty.
By way of a change I took the road home past the rugged Stone of Morphie, a standing stone in the old stackyard of the farm of that name. Nothing is really known of the stone’s history, but one story is that it marks the site of a druid temple. A more romantic tradition is that a Viking warrior killed in battle lies beneath it.
I’ve read that the site was excavated in Victorian times and the bones of a huge man – a giant – were discovered. But what the truth of it all is, we just have to say we don’t know.
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St Cyrus has been a favourite destination for four generations of the Whitson family. Its sheer familiarity has had a hold on me all my life