Killing Donald

Stonehaven

In the long, hot summer of 2018, during the peak of the heatwave, I took a train from Aberdeen to Stonehaven.

While Aberdeen may have been a couple of degrees cooler than the south of England, the train was hotter than the deepest circles of Hell. The carriage should have been clad in pine planks with bench seats. I was sat next to a Scandinavian gentleman who was wearing just a towel. The people across the aisle from me were cooking bacon and eggs for the trip just by placing them on the table in front of them. It was hot. Soon we pulled out of the station and the guard made an announcement which included the phrase: “The First Class carriage is for the purpose of First Class passengers.” I really do love a ridiculous train announcement.

Fairly soon the temperature began to drop ever so slightly as the sea air flowed around the train. It’s only a twenty-minute trip to Stonehaven but it is all along the coast with fields still lush and green, unlike the parched ones I had left behind that morning in East Anglia. Precipitous cliffs drop to a dark blue sea which stretches forever to the mist-milked horizon. There can’t be many twenty-minute train journeys to beat this one, perhaps I don’t always hate trains.

Stonehaven railway station is Stonehaven’s railway station in much the same way as Airport Roma Fiumicino is an airport convenient for Rome. That is to say, when you arrive you still have a bit of a journey to get to where you want to be. While it is in the town, it is not near the things that you want to see on a visit to Stonehaven. This does, however, make your arrival all the more special because from that point forward, Stonehaven just keeps on getting better and better. Just when you think it’s done all that it’s going to do, it provides you with a nicer view.

And as everyone who was on your train is making for the beach, you all walk together, like you were heading to a concert or a rugby match or some other exciting occasion. Troops of people walking the pavements, all heading one way.

The walk to the beach is a pleasant fifteen-minute stroll through residential streets that are resolutely Scottish; stone-built houses with bay windows, often single storey with huge, bay dormer windows in the sloping rooves. As you approach the town centre, the trees and front gardens start to disappear and the houses move out to meet the street.

Then shop fronts start to appear amongst the houses before they take over completely and you’re in the very centre as the big market square opens up. It looks more like a town from my childhood than a twenty-first century town; lots of independent little shops. Actually, no, not a town from my childhood rather a town from the books I read as a child. A town from the pen of Enid Blyton.

I nip down Market Lane, a narrow alleyway, at the end of which I can see the sea. I love the coast, maybe we all do, perhaps it goes back to childhood seaside holidays, perhaps there’s something that goes back even further. When we were hunter-gatherers, coastal locations must have offered the best possible diet. You’ve got the land with its berries and herbs and wild-growing plants and creatures to hunt and you’ve got the sea with fish and shellfish and seabirds and their eggs. Perhaps that’s what draws me to the coast, or maybe it’s just pretty.

Ahead of me lies a huge sweep of stones and rocks at the fringe of a massive bay. To my left, a few houses with a gentle slope rising behind them. To my right, more houses and a church spire and everywhere the smell of the dark blue sea. It’s not, of course, unexpected for a beach to smell of the sea but somehow this one takes it further than anything on the planet outside of a crab’s armpit. It’s not unpleasant but there’s no mistaking the fact that you’re at the seaside. You could bring dead people here in their coffins and they’d know they were at the seaside.

I turn right, in the direction that a sign tells me the harbour lies, and crunch along the stony beach. I guess, if I’d thought about it, that’s precisely what I would have expected at Stonehaven. The lit-up orange letters of a sign, like the ones that you get at the side of the road, tell me that the water quality is forecast to be acceptable today. If I was the mayor of Stonehaven I’d get that sign switched off. If it wasn’t going to say that either the water was fantastic or that you should flee as it might burn your skin off, then I’d leave it switched off. Acceptable water quality is like saying it’s only a bit shit today. To my non-hydrologists eyes, though, the water is just about the clearest and bluest I’ve ever seen at a beach. If you asked a six-year-old to draw a beach and gave them a free choice of crayons, this is the sea they’d draw for you.

As I approach the harbour it is clear that the whole place has been designed in that same naïve and idealised way. It is just a perfect harbour, sweeping round past dozens of bobbing boats, the arms of the harbour walls keeping them safe. A lifeboat station, a hotel, a pub, a fish and chip shop, a bed and breakfast, it is just completely perfect in every way.

At the edge of the harbour there is a small sandy beach with families sat around in the sun, playing, splashing, making sandcastles, having picnics. This is definitely the seaside town that children’s storybooks would tell you about as you grew up in an inner-city and you would never believe that they were real or that you might stand here one afternoon. If the Famous Five ever came to Scotland, this is where Julian, Anne, Dick, George and Timmy had their holiday.

But Stonehaven was not done with me yet, this perfection got even more perfect as I moved further away from it because the sandy coastal path rises steeply and gives glimpses through trees and bushes of the town and the harbour I’ve left behind. These are the pictures that would have been on the front of the Blyton book. Then, beyond the two man-made harbours, is another stony cove, from up here I can see how clear the sea is, looking down onto it and through to the rocky, sloping seabed.

Around the headland comes a small white sailing boat with claret red sails and I climb further to the town’s war memorial, sat alone and high on a hill. It records those from Stonehaven lost in war.

From here I glimpse Dunnottar Castle, its ruins look like they’re quite near, just a little way along the coast. When I start the walk I soon realise that the path to the castle was designed by the man who designed the queues at Disneyland; you keep going but barely seem to draw any closer to your goal. I don’t really mind how long it takes me to get there, though, because, like everything here, it just keeps on getting better. The path runs close to the edge of the cappuccino-coloured cliffs dropping down to the rocks and the sea.

Little fishing boats bob out on the water; the sun is warm but not too hot. I walk past bright sandy coves and look down on a fisherman in a tiny blue and white boat, dropping lobster pots over the side. Birds nod and sing to my right, the waves gently break over the rocks down on my left, the castle fails to get any closer.

If I died, I wouldn’t mind, in fact I wouldn’t even notice. If I went straight to heaven then I am sure that my afternoon would be unchanged. Looking back the way I have come, I can see cove and headland, cove and headland, the war memorial high on the hill in the distance and, turning back, the castle, no bloody nearer.

Eventually I manage to gain a little ground and can see more of the ruined walls and towers with gulls swooping by. Finally, the path actually seems to lead to the castle and I descend the 180 steps down to the entrance. I can’t say what it was like to visit as it was £7 to get in and there were around four minutes before it closed for the day. This did not seem to represent value for money to me, so I climbed back up the 180 steps. A lot of the reviews of the castle mention that the visitor was left breathless, they fail to mention that the reason might be the steps.

I was going to write a few words about how I am not tight with my money but, the fact is, I am. Especially when it comes to visitor attractions. I wouldn’t even mind if places said it was seven quid to come in at nine in the morning when you’ve got nine hours to look around but if you turn up in the last hour it’s a couple of quid. By keeping it the same price right up to closing time they’re basically admitting that there’s fuck all to see and it’s worth the same amount whether you’ve got a few minutes or a whole day.

To be fair to Dunnottar, though, it does have quite a history. There was definitely a fortified building of some sort here by the seventh century when the Picts besieged it. Donald II who, surprisingly given his regnal number, is often said to be the first King of Alba, making it unclear where Donald the First thought he was king of, was killed by the Vikings here at Dunnottar in 900 AD.

He probably didn’t mind being killed if he was here, though. In fact, he might not have even noticed yet. This is heaven.