Spring flowers along the Line

Delicate soft green needle clusters opening on larch

The 54 miles of the walkway provide a superb wild life corridor where vegetation is relatively free from management and grows largely undisturbed by agrichemicals. The plants provide food and shelter for a wide range of birds and small mammals. For those who walk sections of the Line frequently the changing vegetation marks the changing seasons and gives each stretch, from the barren windswept miles of the north  to the tree lined stretch through the great estates of Aden and Pitfour in the 'Garden of Buchan' and the gentle rolling countryside of the Ebrie valley its own character.

Gorse along the Line, suddenly the bushes which have carried some sprigs of flowers all through this mild winter are covered in coconut scented flowers. Daisies thrive and have flowered all year round in the grass at the edge of the path, worn short by passing feet.

Coltsfoot with small hairy caterpillar.
The as yet leafless coltsfoot, is now in  flower, the flowers are smaller and paler than the brash dandelions which have also flowered all through the winter. The leaves will appear once the flowers have faded.

Naturalised daffodils give splashes of colour, usually near road crossings and houses. An old friend of Grey Granite recalled that in the days of steam trains when trains were stationary at a certain point outside Strichen the firemen would occasionally get out of the cab to pick daffodils from the embankment. 

Delicate blackthorn flowers

Lesser celandines open and shine in the sunlight. There are great swathes of them on the damp places, ditches and embankments along the Line

Willow catkins

Lonmay Station, through Spillarsford to Craigellie

The section of Line between Lonmay Station and Craigellie is usually extremely wet and difficult to negotiate, particularly between Spillarsford and Craigellie where stagnant water often covers the pathway. We took advantage of a hard frost to re walk this otherwise attractive stretch. 

Looking from Spillarsford towards Craigellie. Despite the frost there was a bright sprinkling of gorse flowers and  a few silky pussy willow catkins opening on line side trees. The morning felt spring-like as the sun rapidly melted the frost. There were larks singing overhead, skeins of geese heading inland from Strathbeg reserve and a small flock of lapwings tumbling  in the air on the Craigellie side of the Line.

Cortes village seen from just north of Lonmay Station. Originally this small settlement, close to the Peterhead Fraserburgh Turnpike,   was known as Spillarsford from the farm, now a ruin, seen in the trees on the extreme right. Cortes House is about half a mile to the west of the village.The hamlet is actually in Rathen parish being on the Rathen side of the Ellie Burn, the boundary between Lonmay and Rathen. The name Lonmay is thought to be derived from 'Long meadow' and the district has long been famed for the quality of the early potatoes grown on the sandy podsol. The 3rd Statistical account (1960) records the production of seed potatoes for export to England and South Africa. Earlier editions of the Statistical Account indicate that the area contained extensive bog and has been laboriously reclaimed.During the 19th century seaweed, carted from the shores at Cairnbulg and St Combs was used as an effective fertiliser. 

Cairness House seen from the Line near Spillarsford Farm.

The estates of Cairness, Craigellie and Crimonmogate sprawl to the east of the Line, Cortes House is to the west close to  the junction of the Aberdeen to Fraserburgh and Peterhead to Fraserburgh turnpikes.

Spillarsford Farm, long abandoned and now an unseemly ruin on the Lonmay side of the Ellie. 

Close to the Line a little to the north of Spillarsford Farm, this set of ruins,inhabited until the 1970s,  once a mill and  rather more picturesque than the farm, was reached by  a rack running across the fields from Spillarsford.

The lower of the mill ruins, the bank between the mill and the burn has drifts of snow drops.

The beautifully detailed1st edition 25 inch to the mile OS map, dated 1870, shows the mill wheel in position on the gable end of this building, just above the  snowdrops. It also shows a small body of water close to the buildings, probably the mill dam, and the mill lade running under the bridge over the Line from which these photographs were taken. 

Hillhead of Craigellie Farm, the tower is an ornamental dove cot, rising incongruously from the steading. The trees in the background are part of the Craigellie policies.

The 1870 OS map shows a small cluster of cottages at Spillarsford of these the Poorhouse seen above and Station Cottage, below are labelled. This poor house served Rathen parish. A locally administered poorhouse was established in Rathen by 1860. Map evidence indicates that it  seems to have become defunct by around 1900 when  a new edition of the OS map was published.

This large imposing building at Lonmay Station (above) was the bank, the station agent lived in the small cottage below, Station Cottage, Spillarsford.There was also a shoemaker and small general store amongst the cluster of Spillarsford houses. Lonmay Station, yet another relatively isolated station, was convenient for Crimonmogate. In season shooting parties alighted at Lonmay and there was a typically large turning area for coaches and carriages outside the station. At the height of the herring season it was common for open fish wagons waiting for the Fraserburgh catch to be held at the sidings at Lonmay until there was room at Fraserburgh.

Crosshill Bridge, over the Ellon Viaduct to the A920

Looking south down the Line from Crosshill Bridge, where this walk, probably the penultimate section of our journey, began. The out buildings of Auchterellon Farm and the roofs of the outskirts of Ellon can just be seen on the skyline.

The short section of Line from the bridge to Auchterellon runs through a cutting, the sides of which are thickly covered in vegetation, now 'going over'. There dominant species on the embankments is willow herb,  interspersed with brambles and rasps, marsh thistles and gowans, trefoils and occasionally orpine.

Orpine (Sedum telephinium)

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi)

Small Lady's-mantle (Alchemillia glaucescens)

Quite suddenly, after we had passed under a bridge by Auchterellon Farm, we found ourselves walking along the back fences of houses, we could hear that it was playtime at Aucterllon School.

Some houses had artificial flowers in the garden, others, like this were well tended and full of riotously colourful carpet bedding 

The MacDonald Golf Course on the western side of the Line opposite the Auchterellon Estate.

The golf course covers about 40 acres within McDonald Park which was gifted to the town of Ellon  by Sir James Gordon McDonald, KCB, OBE. Born in 1867, McDonald progressed from school in Ellon to Gordon's College in Aberdeen and went on to rise to prominence in  Rhodesia where he supervised mines and cattle ranches for  Cecil Rhodes. This land, which he purchased in 1919, had originally been part of the Ellon Castle estate. Sir James used part of the land to build a retirement home for his parents, laying out woodland,  a park   and the 40 acre golf course in the remainder. The 9 hole golf course was designed by Stewart Burns, a golf professional from Cruden Bay and was officially opened on 1 June 1928 and a year later gifted to the council to be held in trust for the people of Ellon.

The remains of the once busy Ellon Station.

The platform on the left, the up (Aberdeen) platform became an island platform  in 1897 when Ellon became a junction for a branch line to Boddam. The south end of this platform now serves as a garden area for a block of flats built hard against the down line.

This substantial granite structure at the north end of the station is the base of a water tank.

Ellon Station was opened in 1861, the railway passed a little to the west of the town centre, shifting the main focus of the community from the Square to the area close to the station. Not only the hotel but also a tannery, two auction marts and the hospital were soon established in the vicinity of the station. Rather grand dwellings, used as summer residences by wealthy Aberdonians were built on Station Road. The former goods yard to the east of the station is now occupied by an industrial development.

Historically Ellon was regarded as the gateway to Buchan: This was the furthest point downstream that the Ythan could be crossed by ford and ferry. The status of burgh granted the right to hold a thriving market which brought trade from the rich agricultural hinterland. The arrival of the railway opened the countryside up, creating relatively rapid transport links with the ports of Fraserburgh and Peterhead,  the city of Aberdeen and intermediate villages. So Ellon became a dormitory town this continued with the arrival of the oil industry in the NE and is still clearly reflected in the pattern of housing expansion seen as one walks the Line across the town.

The wonderfully baronial Station Hotel , built in 1891, overlooked the station and reflects the confidence with which Ellon expanded to the west following the coming  of the railway.

Following his retirement McDonald divided his time between Rhodesia and the Station Hotel which included a wing constructed and retained for his  exclusive use. During WW2 he joined the Ellon Home Guard but also served as an intelligence officer, perishing on 7th December  1942 when SS Ceramic, on which he was sailing to South Africa, was torpedoed by a German U-boat. McDonald left a bequest of £30,000 to be used to establish an art gallery and museum in Salisbury. This, with additional funding, facilitated the establishment of what was eventually to become the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.

The Ellon viaduct carries the line over the Ythan. The remains of one of the original railway telegraph posts can be seen 

The viaduct originally had three arches over the river, the laying of the keystone of the third and final arch by Charles N Gordon of Esslemount took place with great ceremony on October 2nd 1860. However, the foundations of the abutment on the south bank of the river were built into  soft clay  which proved unstable, causing the the bridge to collapse one Sunday afternoon, fortunately before the Line was open  The opening of the railway was delayed until a four arched replacement viaduct  could be built. By the time a statutory Board of Trade inspection of the line was carried out by Col Yolland on 10th and 11th July 1861 the centering had only been removed for three weeks and there was already some evidence of subsidence. Col Yolland approved the bridge but insisted that it should be carefully monitored and train services began on the line on 18th July 1861.There were no further mishaps.

From the crossing with Craigs Road (B9005) the Line is raised on an embankment from which one looks over the rooftops of newer housing developments, bisected by the Ythan, seen here from the viaduct.

Foresters Terrace seen from the railway viaduct, the grand baronial building in the centre  of the picture is Auchtercrag.

Foresters Terrace is thought to have been built by The Ancient Order of Foresters, a friendly society. The site of the new houses behind the terrace was once occupied by a plant nursery and florists.

Auchtercrag was built set back from Commercial Road  in 1894 for William Smith who had a  boot and shoe factory close by. The house has changed hands many times in the intervening years having been unoccupied for some time before being bought by Gordon District Council in 1987. It has been restored and converted into seven flats known as the Auchtercrag Development. The boot factory was taken over by the McLaren Brothers in 1904 and specialised in producing heavy farm boots marketed as 'The Clan' boot. Clan boots were made of waterproof leather and had tackets on the soles and  iron toe and heel plates and were a huge success for the factory until the arrival of the wellington boot drastically reduced demand. Lighter boots were also made for Kingseat and Cornhill Hospitals. There is now a residential home for the elderly on the site of the boot factory.

Savoch to Arnage Bradshaw's Handbook

'Aberdeenshire, which is one of the most extensive counties in Scotland....forms the north-east corner of the island, being the eastern-most part of a large triangle, which juts far out into the German Ocean....The greater part of it may be denominated a level plain, agreeably diversified by irregular depressions, and gently swelling slopes, forming a congeries of little knolls, with vales between, each intersected by its little rill, so as to exhibit the scenery, the general appearance of which is tolerably uniform, though its particular features are varied at every step.'

The description above, from Bradshaw's Descriptive Railway Handbook of Great Britain and Ireland, originally published in 1863, but reissued in facsimile earlier this year, perfectly fits this pleasant section of the Line. There was nothing dramatic, just pleasant, unspoiled rolling farmland basking, when Grey Granite and Rufus walked it in August heat.

 We headed south joining the Line at  Burngrains Bridge walking out of Buchan and into Formartine

The Line gently curves along the valley cut out by the Ebrie, following heavy showers the previous day the burn was running fast and babbled alongside the Line for much of our route. The main  watercourse is joined by several nameless tributaries. Place names in the immediate vicinity and the frequency of  mills along this short stretch of the  Line indicate that the power of the water was put to good use in the past, Milton of Inkhorn, Waulkmill of Savoch, Mill of Towie Miltown of Drumwhindle. Waulkmill, Cardinghill and Lintrigs indicate the importance of grain and textile industries.

Modern wind turbines replace the old watermills throughout  the district

Frog bit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae) in the Ebrie

This frog-bit is the first Grey Granite has ever seen, peered at through binoculars the white flowers are beautiful, reminiscent of Grass of Parnassus, seeing this was  a highlight of the whole Walking the Line project.

A concrete Linesman's hut by a bridge giving passage to fields on either side of the Line near Waulkmill of Auchnagatt

The platform at Arnage Station is now very overgrown and could easily be overlooked.  There were stone station buildings on the downside (west) at Arnage Station, these are now largely hidden by fencing and trees, houses have been built in the station yard.

On the East of the track are the extensive wooded policies of Arnage Castle, the castle itself is hidden by the trees.

A linesman's hut at the southern end of the  platform below doing duty as a garden shed at Arnage

 A loading platform to the west of the main platform at Arnage. A passing loop was added sometime after the station opened in July 1861

Auchnagatt to Savoch

On a blisteringly hot morning Grey Granite and Rufus walked down from Auchnagatt towards Arnage, such was the heat that they left the line at Burngrains Bridge and went to look for a suitable parking place for the next leg of their trek. This took them to Savoch Kirkyard, which they had seen on the horizon from Elrick Trout Fishery.

Walking south from Auchnagatt we again followed the Ebrie Burn and had the sense of walking through a wide amphitheatre surrounded by rolling farmland. The land adjacent to the Line was again damp and rushy, willows, alders and the occasional oak grow alongside the trackway. Unfortunately, traffic on the A948 disturbs the tranquillity of this section until the road and railway diverge close to the  Mill of Elrick

The Mill of Elrick,  note the solar panels on the roof of the mill which a has diversified by becoming a a trout fishery. There are several large ponds alongside the Line.

Looking west across one of the Mill of Elrick fish ponds Savoch Church may be seen on the skyline. Grey Granite is certain that the large bird she saw rising from one of the ponds was an osprey.

Enormous butterwort leaves by the mill.

The Ebrie Burn crosses and recrosses the Line in many places,  here it is densely lined with the willows which were used for basket making in the Auchnagatt area.

Savoch Church

The isolated church, now redundant, commands impressive views over beautiful rolling farmland and is situated about a quarter a mile west of  the Line near Ebrie Lodge (Leave the Line at Burngrains Bridge. The congregation would have consisted of the people from Auchnagatt, where there is no church,   and the surrounding countryside. Grey Granite noted the boot scrapers still on either side of the front door.

Savoch Church,  a originally Chapel of Ease for those living in the district,  was erected by subscription in 1834.The church has  a rectangular plan with a birdcage belfry at the east gable where there is also a porch. In May 1851 the Court of Teinds raised Savoch to the status of a parish formed from portions of New Deer, Old Deer, Ellon, Methlick and Tarves parishes. The terraced church yard was opened in 1877 when the church building greatly was improved. As part of the renovation the stained glass windows which can be seen  from the outside of the building were made and installed on either side of the pulpit. One window was presented by Mrs Udny of Udny, the other by the church's Woman's Guild. Savoch Church closed in October 1997. 

The belfry above the east gable east gable seen from the lower terrace of the kirkyard.

The inscription on this obelisk states 'That the churchyard  laid out by the parishioners at a cost of £300 was opened in 1877. The obelisk is visible on the upper terrace in the photograph above.

The elegant pink granite obelisk on the lower terrace of the kirkyard overlooks the beautiful farmland of the parish.Tellingly this records 39 deaths in WW1 and 4 from WW2. The devastatingly large list from 1914-18 includes William Milne DCM, William Robb MM .

On this lower terrace there are excellent examples of Victorian gravestones, many of polished granite topped with granite urns.

This stone close to the church on the upper terrace has a draped urn, popular in mid  Victorian times and the inscription:
Erected by James Gordon, Station Agent Auchnagatt in memory of his beloved son Robert died 23 August 1881, aged 4 years.

The Bridge over the Line at Burngrains, walking back to Auchnagatt we were very glad of the slight shade afforded by the bushes and trees in cutting from here to Mill of Elrick. There is a  path up the embankment by the bridge and parking at Savoch Church which will enable our walk to be resumed from this point.

North from Auchnagatt

The Buchan Formartine Way is crossed by the busy A948 close to the former Auchnagatt station. Our walk north from the station was through pleasant countryside, the Line follows the course of the Ebrie burn for the first mile or so and the gurgle of the burn could be heard in lulls in the noise of the traffic. Because the Line follows the watercourse and a wide valley flanked by gentle hills, there is a feeling of walking through a wide basin. The walk was fragrant firstly with dog roses, then as we passed through marshy fields with meadow sweet and sweet cecily, opposite Teuchitfold there was the  strong resinous smell from a  plantation of young conifers. 

Auchnagatt Village Hall is  situated adjacent to the site of Auchnagatt Station, the carpark is convenient for the walking  the Line.

The hall retains a slightly ecclesiastical air derived from its origins as the East Independent  Church in Stuartfield. This very small denomination was formed by the supporters of Reverend George A Johnson, a popular and gifted preacher who was removed from his charge at Deer parish Church in 1892 on account of his drunkenness. Loyal members of his congregation supported him and and built a church in Mill Street, Stuartfield at which he was able to continue his ministry. Known as The East Independent  Church, the wooden church had a slate roof and seating capacity of 450.  Johnson preached in  the church from 1893 until 1903 when he became a lay preacher in Shetland before eventually returning to the Church of Scotland. Meanwhile, in Auchnagatt it was  decided that the village needed a public hall and that the then  redundant Stuartfield church building should be purchased. Each member of the organizing committee contributed £5 and additional funds were raised by the community through various events to pay for the removal of the building from Stuartfied and its re-erection close to the railway Station. 

The Elbrie Burn runs between the Village Hall and the station then flows alongside the Line. It  joins the Ythan just north of Ellon. The name Auchnagatt is said to mean the place of the withies (willows) and to be derived from the baskets and creels  woven in the village from the willows growing alongside the Elbrie.

Auchnagatt Station, the concrete posts which supported the station name remain, the trees growing on the former platform include willows.

An eye catching sprawl of geranium above cow parsley and sweet cecily on the platform.

All that remains of the once busy station yard at Auchnagatt, in its heyday sidings and  five goods sheds dealt with  agricultural freight. Old O.S. maps indicate that there was a corn mill close to the station.

Foxgloves, dog roses and hogweed close to the station. There were many wild flowers along this pretty section of the Line, notably heartsease pansies, birds'foot trefoil, yellow rattle and white clover.

This bridge  just north of Cairncummer carries a farm road over the Line, an additional arch allows the Ebrie to flow under the farm road. The bridge retains part of the old telegraph wires which ran along the whole Buchan Line

A very well preserved precast concrete Linesman's hut in  a stand of beeches near Greenbrae.

Sliver birches along the Line north of North Greenbrae. There  extensive  rosebay willow herb along the route (as on the left above)

Approaching Auchnagatt from the north