Delightful day for thoroughly enjoyable expedition on extraordinary east coast

I’m normally greeted by the noisy squalling of seabirds when I visit the RSPB’s Fowlsheugh Nature Reserve at Crawton, between Catterline and Stonehaven. That’s because I normally visit the reserve about May and June when the cliffs are alive with thousands of seabirds which have come ashore to nest.

One way or another, I didn’t make it this spring but when Monday looked set to be sunny, I chucked Inka into the car, grabbed my camera and set off up the coast.

Up the Mearns and down Strathmore the green fields of autumn looked good. My father used to tell me that from the top of Garvock Hill, overlooking Laurencekirk, you can see the church spires of Perth to the west and those of Aberdeen to the east. After three score years and 10, I’ve yet to see the spires of either city.

When your father tells you these things at an impressionable age you take them as gospel and I still live in the hopeless belief that one day I’ ll see a wee kirk spire keeking up in the misty distance.

Oil seed rape is the first of next year’s crops to be planted. It has an initial rush of growth then goes into what I call suspended animation over winter.

Likewise, winter sown barley and winter wheat has a burst of growth before the frosts call a halt. The stubbles still retain the remnants of their butter-yellow flush when the crop has just been combined.

The name Fowlsheugh translates as bird cliff in the north-east Doric. Obvious really – for millennia the seabirds have been nesting on the narrow ledges and crevices sculpted by the weather out of the plum pudding rock cliffs – which incidentally is the same rock formation as Dunnottar Castle, a mile or so up the coast, is built on.

I normally leave Inka at home for this walk to avoid disturbing the colony of ground-nesting herring gulls and groundnesting songbirds such as skylarks and meadow pipits. But at this time of year there are no such concerns so it was good to have his company – a walk without a dog never seems to be a proper walk.

It’s a short climb up to the cliff top. The sun sparkled on the battleship-grey sea 200 feet below me. I expected it to be blowing a real hooley on the headland. There was a brisk breeze but it was no way as stormy as I had expected. Sir Walter Scott, on a sea journey from Arbroath to Aberdeen on which he was seasick, noted in his diary “... vessel off Fowlsheugh and Dunnottar. Fair wind and delightful day”. Which pretty well summed up how I found it – not the seasickness bit, the weather.

Not another soul was out walking and we had the place to ourselves. I kept Inka well

back from the cliff edge which is obscured with thick vegetation – it’s a long drop to the sea below. Orange-gold lichen, known as sunburst lichen, carpets the rocks.

The cliffs are coated white with the guano of generations of nesting seabirds. In a shallow dip, two sparks of colour gleamed – a white floret of yarrow and a single flower of pink campion – enduring reminders of a summer past. The low vegetation on the exposed headland reflects how desolate it can be in the winter gales.

I called Inka and we turned to make our way back to the car. I’ll be back again in the spring and the nesting season when the empty cliffs are resounding to the cries and grunts and hoots of kittiwakes, razorbills and guillemots, fulmars and puffins. Thrift, or sea pinks, my mother’s favourite seaside flower, will be shivering in the breeze on stiff, skinny stalks.

The heat was going out of the day and I’d had the best of it. I was looking forward to a piping bowl of the Doyenne’s homemade soup.

I took the narrow coast road back to the old fishing village of Catterline and drove down the steep road to the small harbour built in 1730.

Lazy waves soughed on to the shingle beach with ceaseless, me t r o n o m i c regularity. There’s something comforting in knowing that however troubled the rest of the world is, the tides are an enduring constant.

I saluted Tod Head lighthouse, built in 1897 by David Stevenson, uncle of Robert Louis, one of my literary heroes. The light served its purpose for more than a century, winking out its message of comfort to mariners, but it was permanently discontinued in 2007.

On homewards past euphonic

Whistleberry Farm. There’s little trace now of 16th Century Whistleberry Castle – it was long ago demolished and its stones and masonry recycled by neighbouring farmers to build handsome new farm steadings.

Then it was home. Inka dropped into his bed and fell sound asleep until his stomach told him it was supper time. It had been an altogether thoroughly enjoyable expedition.

Not another soul was out walking and we had the place to ourselves

In May and June. Picture by Angus Whitson. HAVEN: Fowlsheugh Nature Reserve and the guano-white cliffs to which seabirds flock