Same Old Slains – by Duncan Harley


This lockdown situation has involved lots of changes. Social distancing, millions furloughed or working from home and more millions immersed in some bizarre governmental inspired Churchillian rhetoric dating from the 1940’s. Hopefully this time around we shall not be fighting in France.
Bright lights on the horizon such as Sturgeon suggest that there may be an opportunity here to re-purpose and re-focus and I hope she is both correct in this assumption and correctly listened to.

Anyway, not only am I in lockdown, but as of last week I am in something termed shielded lockdown. What does this mean? Well, I am part of an alien group who should avoid all human contact whatsoever just in case. Not that I currently have the virus, although I suspect I may have already had it some weeks ago, but just that I may get it – but nobody knows. Hence the enhanced shielding.

Plusses? An offer of a weekly food parcel and priority access to supermarket delivery slots. I may take the powers that be up on both of those. After all its nigh on time they supported struggling writers.

So, lots of time to read, to write and to edit footage.

Today’s writing didn’t happen due to plumbing issues. A leaky boiler – not a leaky bladder - and a soggy ceiling put paid to that. Likewise, the film stuff is again on hold. But I did get to languish in the sun while waiting for my plumber fix the leak.

Book of choice today? Anson’s ‘Fishing Boats and Fisher Folk on the East Coast of Scotland’ caught my attention. It’s essentially a gazetteer type snapshot of, as the title suggests, fishing boats and fisher folk. Dating from 1934 and, in common with all of Peter’s books, stunningly illustrated with his pen and ink sketches, it includes a shortish piece on the Old Castle of Slains.

He writes: ‘One and a half miles beyond Collieston, we come to the old Castle of Slains, standing out on a narrow promontory, having a few fisherman’s cottages beside it’s ruined tower and crumbling walls.’
He goes on the record the number of boats once present on the shore beneath and comments that Slains is ‘perhaps the most curiously situated fishing village on the east coast of Scotland.’

Oddly perhaps, Anson’s 1934 book makes no reference to the fact that, barely forty years before, a fellow author – Bram Stoker of Dracula fame - trudged, on his daily walks, past that same Old Slains.

Duncan Harley is author of The A-Z of Curious Aberdeenshire and The Little History of Aberdeenshire. Both titles are available from Amazon. Just search for Duncan Harley in the Amazon search box.


Location: Cruden Bay, Peterhead, UK

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