Scotland’s changing countryside

Scotland’s patchwork of crops, farmland, and wonderful stone steadings are as wonderful as ever. 

The featured photograph is adjacent to the Auchmacoy Estate, on the back road between Collieston and Ellon.  The wee cottage pictured was spruced up in the mid-1970s by friends (John & Sue MacLennan) but latterly has been swallowed by ivy since.  This neglect appears to be an exception - many of the dilapidated farm cottages in Scotland’s North East have been renovated since I was there last. It’s obvious that the countryside is not suffering depopulation like in parts of New Zealand. I guess that the overall population of Scotland is so great and transport so inexpensive and fast that many people choose to live in the ‘country’ but work and play in nearby cities and towns – that’s much harder in New Zealand. 

There are a many more trees and signs of active planting in the North East now.  I used to have to bolt up the Dee Valley when I first lived there just to see and smell trees and forest.  In 20- 30 years, the NE will look very different.

A photograph of the “Culch Monument”, near New Deer, is included in the Extra Photos gallery. It’s close to where my partner Fiona Stirling’s great, great, great (... is that enough Fiona?) grandfather lived before emigrating to Fiji and then New Zealand in the 1860s. He was a younger son in a family of Millers, apparently from the old “Culch Mill” – but there is some uncertainty because another Culch Mill is listed at Tarland.