May 8th - Stonehaven

Recently, when I've visited new places. I've searched for audio tours as a way to get to know that place. Audio tours combine expert knowledge and on-the-ground exploration--the best of both worlds. The voice of a local "expert" tells you things you'd never know without them, but you get to walk the city on foot and get to know it on a first-hand basis (in a way you can't at, say, a history museum). I found a delightful audio walking tour of Stonehaven.

It begins down at the square, where we learn that while there was a long-extant fishing village, the land itself was owned by a landowner who made his money "in the West Indies" (ie, this little town in northeast Scotland is an offshoot of the slave economy). This feature of British life is strange to an American--the ubiquitous presence of a super-wealthy landed class ("hey... I own that... town").

In every tour in Scotland, there's some reference to the poet-laureate, Robbie Burns. Burns, the 18th-century philandering, anti-religious, socialist man-of-the-people, is everywhere in Scotland. Apparently, his father and grandfather were from this part of Scotland--his grandfather was a gardener at Dunnotar Castle. There's a Burns bust here in this private garden. There is literally a Burns statue, bust, or plaque in every town in Scotland. It's amazing that a literary figure is such a hero.

Anyway, the Stonehaven tour leads you around, introduces you to the two most famous "sons" of Stonehaven--RW Thompson, inventor of the modern tire, and John Reith, a 6'6" closeted gay conservative who also developed the most important media outlet in Britain, the BBC. It touches on the Dunnotar Estate story, which is far sadder (massive gambling debts, infidelity) than the signage in the woods indicates.

Next to the Catholic Church is a soup kitchen. I'm sure the Presbyterians had a soup kitchen, too... just wasn't on the tour. Right? I know you can get cynical about religion, but religious people can be good, too.

It took me to the old town, at the harbor, where I had one of the best meals of the trip (granted, I've been cooking for myself mostly). The Seafood Bothy is a food truck that sits on the pier, just next to the boat that catches all the seafood they serve. My crayfish (European Spiny Lobster) roll and cullen skink soup were top-shelf.

There's a series of sculptures by the beach that includes an early dolphin sculpture by Andy Scott, who would later go on to build the Kelpies, a massive metal sculpture near Falkirk, Scotland.

The tour finished at the War Memorial, a WWI-era monument built on top of the hill overlooking Stonehaven harbor. I don't think we have any idea just how shocking WWI was to Europe. So many young men died, brutally. I think American culture is in the process of forgetting WWII's costs. The monument is unfinished at the top, an explicit reference to the lives lost that were, themselves, unfinished.