Dunnottar Castle

Took a trip with my parents on Monday this week up the coast to Dunnottar Castle.

Precarious approach to the castle.

A different angle from the same spot. Sun was out a bit more for this one too.

The view from the headland where you can see the people on the right in the top photograph. No fence at the edge of the cliff, so remember where you are whilst you’ve got your face pressed to the camera!

A better look at the cliffs on this side of the headland. Can’t imagine they got many visitors from across the sea.

Beautiful weather whilst we were there. Sea level is over a hundred feet beneath this photo, so that water can’t be a well & must be collected otherwise.

Nice doorway into the chapel. Wonder what the door would have looked like?


Lovely lichen covering all of the stonework.

Nice thick walls to keep you warm during the Scottish winters. And guess what – they all have a sea view!

It would have to be a brave army to try to scale the cliffs at the back of the castle!

Nice spot to eat lunch. This wasn’t originally a garden, as it is actually ‘indoors’ if you see what I mean.

For the return trip we took one of the old military roads that climbed up to around 1500ft at its highest point. The clouds had rolled back in by this point so there wasn’t much to see from Cairn O’Mount except for grey scenery as far as the eye could see. We passed through Falls of Feugh before we started up into the hills, which is a prime location to watch salmon jumping upstream when it comes to the right season. Because of the recent heavy rainfall, the falls were a bit more violent than usual & had taken on a ‘Coke’ colour as my mother described it!

Coastal Walk Wildlife

My parents are in town for a few days & this morning we went for a walk along the coastal path heading out of St Andrews from East Sands. Took a few photos of rocks & such & a few panoramas, but haven’t stitched any of those together yet. We were quite surprised at the number of butterflies about though, considering the weather – in fact, one of the reasons that they stayed still long enough to photograph was because they were too cold to fly! This was taken with the Pentax Optio A30 in automatic mode – didn’t want to risk it flying away whilst I was setting up the shot manually! Not bad macro capabilities for an ultra-compact.