Strichen Community Park to Viewbank Bridge, McEwans Ale.

A rare day, cold and crisp with a thick hoar frost, perfect for walking the Line, we walked from  from the Lodge at Strichen Community park to Viewbank Bridge returning along Brewery Road. There was very little breeze and beautiful clear light. Almost all deciduous trees are now bare, those coppery golden leaves persisting on beech trees along the Line blazed in the sunlight.Sections of the Line were very wet indeed and we almost paddled through icy water in places. As usual there were many small birds, including long tailed tits in the lineside trees, particularly close to the coniferous wood close to the Lodge and we heard a buzzard over Borrohill Wood.

Morning frost on the field in front of the brewery which gave Brewery Road its name. Latterly the brewery functioned as a bottling plant.

 

Original label from a bottle of McEwan's pale ale bottled at the brewery  in Strichen

Looking back along the Line from the point closet to Strichen House. The White Horse and Hunter's Lodge are just visible on Mormond Hill. The coppery leaves are on beech trees.

White frost on grass and cow parsley 

Fraserburgh (Authentic Dunes Course) Golf Club

After crossing the B9033 the first mile of the Formartine Buchan Way runs alongside the historic Fraserburgh Golf Course. Golf has a long history in Fraserburgh. The Parish Kirk Session is recorded as having disciplined a boy, John Burnett,  for playing golf on the Sabbath in Fraserburgh in 1613.

Fraserburgh Golf Course has the distinction of being the only golf course in the world still existing under its original name. Founded on 14th April 1777 by 'nineteen of the most prominent landed gentry in the north east of Scotland', the club is also the 7th oldest golf club in the world, the 5th oldest in Scotland and the oldest club  north of St Andrews. 

Originally the course was situated on the Fraserburgh Links and consisted of only nine holes. This course became overcrowded and play was frequently interrupted so, following a  gift of land from Lord Salton, the course moved to its present location in 1891. The golf club website describes playing the wildly undulating course being an experience close to how golfing must have been a century ago.

 The present club house was opened in 2006, a fire having destroyed its predecessor in 2004. 

Looking across the course from the Line. Corbie Hill is in the distance on the far side of the road, Rose Hill which gives its name to the 9 hole course in the foreground is under the conifers.

 The course closest to the railway line is the 9 hole Rosehill Course, the 18 hole Corbie Hill course on the far side of the B9033 stretches along Fraserburgh Bay  to the Water of Philorth Local Nature Reserve.

The line south of the Fraserburgh Golf Club clubhouse looking towards  Philorth Halt with Philorth Woods on the right