Tag: Findhorn

Elgin, Findhorn and Inverness

On By Carol HenshawIn Beaches, Scotland, walks2 Comments

On our way to spend a couple of nights in our van in Findhorn, we stopped in Elgin to stay in a B&B recommended by some friends. South of the A9 before we diverted up Speyside, we passed Glen Feshie which sits on the side of the Cairngorm Massif. I had recently read an article about 200 people from there who emigrated to Canada in the early 1830s and established a town called Badenoch on the shores of Lake Ontario. They cleared the heavily forested land and threatened the livelihood of the local indigenous people, the Mississaugas, a nomadic people whose traditional migratory routes were cut off. The immigrant community grew with additional English and German settlers. It is hard to believe that people who had grown up with the consequences of the clearances in Scotland could do this to the local people.

After settling into our accommodation in Elgin, we had a meal in a restaurant in a close off the High Street. Our host told us that Elgin was initially a network of narrow streets until the Victorians created the High Street and built St Giles’s church. The map shows the remains of a castle and several old wells. The following morning, we awoke to blue skies and sunshine and set out to explore the Cathedral ruins and the nearby Biblical Garden. The first cathedral was constructed in 1224.

The Biblical Garden is part laid out in the shape of a Celtic Cross

and also has statues of biblical characters with a note relating to their section of the bible.

There is also a space where you can sit and eat a picnic.

Leaving Elgin on the A941 we saw that like many towns in East Lothian, lots of new houses are being built on the outskirts. By the time we stopped for a coffee in Lossiemouth it had started to cloud over.

Heading west along the coast we passed RAF Lossiemouth, Hopeman, Roseisle Maltings and Kinross Airfield where we turned into the road to Findhorn. The Aire is situated on the Findhorn Bay Local Nature Reserve. 

The Findhorn River is 60 miles long. Its source is in the Am Monadh Liath mountains and it runs down to the Moray coast where it reaches the sea at the village of Findhorn.  Thomas Henderson wrote a book The Findhorn’ published in 1932. He describes the village of Findhorn as ‘now but a holiday resort of a charmingly primitive kind’. The Culbin Estate is near Findhorn. In the 17th century it was a prosperous farm protected from wind by the dunes. It lay on a low peninsula in the bay. In November 1694 a huge storm flooded Findhorn.  The people had to escape and the sea completely covered the Culbin Estate. 16 farms, land, the lairds house and all the workers houses were completely destroyed. A new river course to the sea had opened.  The Culbin forest is across the water from Findhorn.

The village was once a trading port. The local lairds were co-partners. They sold and shipped out their timber, salmon, herring and cod and imported luxuries. Thomas Henderson lists a selection of cargo ordered from Holland in 1649: soap, dyeing materials e.g., Indigo, raisins, currants, figs, prunes, ginger, sugar, aniseed, black pepper, wine, tobacco and more.

We were close to the beach and there are steps up the dunes for access.

There are some stones on the beach but not as many as at Spey Bay.

I did several beach walks on the first day.

On our second morning we had a coffee at the Bakehouse Market and then walked via the marina and the beach to the Aire.

In the afternoon we visited the Ice House which covers the local history of salmon fishing which was the main industry until 1987.

The main Heritage Centre was closed.

That evening I watched the sun go down on the beach.

On our way back home, we diverted to Inverness to visit some friends and had a walk alongside the River Ness.

Round Britain: Spey Bay to Nairn

On By Carol HenshawIn Beaches, ScotlandLeave a comment


In order to cross the River Spey, the coastal trail runs south alongside the river down to Fochabers. It passes a small community with the evocative name of Bogmoor. We continued into Elgin for supplies. Lossiemouth is the next town along the road, for many years the home of RAF Lossiemouth. The east beach is reached by a footbridge across the River Lossie.

There was some street art by the harbour which was a little worn.

While having a coffee in one of the esplanade hotels, we got into conversation with a family at the next table. The older woman had been a nursing assistant at the hospital in Elgin which is struggling to recruit doctors and some services may be closed and relocated. Even though they are closer to Inverness here, they are still in the NHS Grampian area which means they often have to travel to Aberdeen for appointments and procedures. There were a few ice-cream parlours run by Italian families as there are in many towns in Scotland. Many of their families had come over to Scotland in the late 19th and early 20th century. West of town on the coast near the RAF base is Covesea Lighthouse which can be visited and the old keepers’ cottages can be rented for holidays.

Further west is the private Gordonstoun School. Just before Hopeman, the road was closed because of an accident. A cyclist had been hit by a car and the air ambulance was on the road. Our next stop was Burghead

where the ramparts of an old fort can be seen under the vegetation and there are two ancient wells. The town has a large maltings and there is another on the road to Kinloss. The ruins of an old Cistercian Abbey founded in 1150 by monks from Melrose Abbey in the Borders. It functioned for 400 years until the Reformation in 1560. In 1650 Alexander Brodie of Lethan reduced it to a ruin and sold some of the stone to Oliver Cromwell for the construction of Inverness Citadel.

Findhorn lies at the mouth of the River Findhorn. The Findhorn Foundation here began in 1962. An eco-village which functions in a sustainable and spiritual manner was opened in the 1980s and in 1997 is became a NGO. There is a on old hotel now used for workshops and meetings etc and they have retreats on Iona and Erraid. We had a walk on the beach.

JA Steers in my New Naturalist Sea Coast book states that the coast between Nairn and Burghhead has ‘the finest mass of sand dunes in Great Britain’. Culbin was an old estate which was working agricultural land. In 1694 it was overtaken and buried by the sand, re-appearing once around the end of the 18th century. Much of the land is now forest but there is a nature reserve. We stopped in Nairn and had a walk on the East Beach.


Our campsite was away from the sand and in Denlies Wood which lies to the west of Nairn. Before the rain caught up with us, we had a walk in the woods which was a pleasant change from beaches.

Although the woodland is mixed, there is lot of Scots Pine and other conifers, so we have seen red squirrels and back at the campsite hooded crows probing the ground around the pitches. We are hoping for a drier day tomorrow.