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.
