IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Cruden Bay, PETERHEAD, AB42 0QH

The farm house is just in square, and the buildings are in the next square. The Bay of Cruden is beyond.

Just under my feet there is a major pipeline bringing ashore Scotland's oil. The complex Forties pipeline system carries about 700 thousand barrels per day, 30% of the UK's oil. It is owned and operated by UK-based global energy company BP. The system, which consists of a 36-inch pipeline originating at the Forties Charlie platform, carries crude oil 169 kilometres to the Cruden Bay pumping station, mile or so from here. From there, the crude flows a further 209 km south to the processing facility at Grangemouth on the Firth of Forth. North Sea oil is in fact Scotland's third oil industry. The first was based not on petroleum oil but on whale oil. In the 18th and 19th centuries whalers sailed to Greenland from Scottish ports, particularly Dundee, Aberdeen and Peterhead. There they harpooned Bowhead whales and brought back their blubber in barrels. The blubber was boiled back in Scotland and the oil used for a range of purposes including street lighting and textile and jute manufacture. The second oil industry came about thanks to one James 'Paraffin' Young. In 1851 he began to distil oil, at first from coal and later from rock shales, near to Bathgate, in West Lothian. This was the foundation of the modern oil industry, providing the raw material for a new range of chemicals. His legacy can still be seen in the landscape of West Lothian in the form of huge red mounds or bings, of spent shale from which oil has been extracted Image

near Whinnyfold. Location of this snap gives a better than usual perspective of the 'Bay' aspect of Cruden Bay. Brooding ruin of Slains Castle to the right

Horses, and a few sheep, were grazing on the fields high above Cruden Bay.

This is a closer view of Image I have never before noticed a post box with GR on it but no indication of which King George was the one in question. I am grateful to James Yardley who tells me that it is most likely to have been George V, because post boxes had not been invented by the time of George IV.

Whinnyfold isn't troubled by much in the way of public amenities apart from street lighting, water, sewerage, electricity and a well cared for post box. Post box enthusiasts may like to see a closer view Image

Former fishing village perched on a clifftop above a small bay.

Looking in the direction of Cruden Bay.