The bus

There is a long tradition in Scotland of showing on a gravestone the trade or profession of the deceased. This may be stated explicitly or by means of a carved symbol of some kind. This stone marks the resting place of Sandy Blackhall the local bus driver. As the carving of the horse suggests, in Mr Blackhall's time the bus was horse-drawn.

Today the  bus takes about 20 minutes to reach Aberdeen, on a good day that is!  Back in the 19th century, when roads were much less well made and maintained, the journey would have taken much longer. In 1906, Ann Gillespie, the mother of the renowned Aberdeenshire artist James McBey, committed suicide in Aberdeen. In his autobiography McBey describes taking his mother’s body home for burial in Foveran kirkyard on the outskirts of Newburgh. He recounts that the horse-drawn hearse, accompanied by a single carriage, took over 3 hours to wind its way along the turnpike through 15 km of deep mud; an average speed of 5 kph.