Didn’t leave the hotel until about 1000 for a look around Aberdeen.

We drove down to the beachfront, there were a lot of people walking along the beach, a path above the beach and the footpath along the road.  Many of them had a dog or dogs with them.  At the south end of that we found ourselves at the harbour entrance, Jude spoke to a fellow who had just sold a restaurant overlooking the beach and harbour.  Don walked in through a couple of little laneways into a village that had small stone houses that were more than 200 years old.  He spoke to a woman who came out of one of the houses she had always lived there and 2 of her children had bought into the area (it is only about 300m square).

We were told that Aberdeen was a dreary place.  But we think it looks like a great place and it is much smaller than we thought it would be.  Many of the older buildings seem to be build of granite rather than limestone so they have by and large maintained their colour and not gone the drab dirty colour that the limestone further south does.  The buildings and town in general is a great looking place.  The only downer is the dozen or so high-rise sets of flats (probably about 20 stories).

We went over to the south side of the harbour entrance to an old fort where we went for a short walk (although it was sunny the strong easterly breeze was a bit brisk!) then sat and had lunch looking back over the harbour to the town.

The harbour is obviously a base for a lot of the rig tenders that service the North Sea oil rigs, there were about 7 anchored off the coast and quite a few in the harbour.  We also saw 3 leave the harbour.

In the past Aberdeen was a big herring fishery, that is before the herring collapsed around the 1930s.

There are probably more golf courses in Aberdeen than in the whole of Perth (a bit of an exaggeration)