Stonehaven Circular

It was a beautiful afternoon yesterday for our 2nd Friday walk this year. The selection criteria has altered over the last while - rather than looking for great or challenging hill-walks we now seem to seek ones that have a good pub at the end of them - and yesterday was no exception. In all the years we have been doing this we'd never previously been to Stonehaven.

The initial plan was to bus to Aberdeen then bus or train to Stonehaven but there was a late change of plan from Dave. Ruby had a bit of an upset stomach and Dave felt it would be safer if he drove us all over - there were only 5 of us and we were able to squeeze in to Dave's car.

Dave planned to leave his car in Stonehaven overnight and cycle over there this morning to collect it, so our planned 2 car pickup from Bev and Ross remained as was.

Walks round Stonehaven are pretty limited - the most obvious being the circular through Dunnottar Woods and past Dunnottar Castle (https://themackwalks.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/001-stonehaven-dunnottar-castle-circular/).

Dave parked his car at Carron Gardens (step 3 on the above web site) and off we went in to the woods. The first item of interest we passed was what is called the Shell House:


We came out of the woods and walked a couple of hundred yards on the path beside the road then crossed up a lane:



At the end of the lane across the road is the castle car park and entrance. It was pretty warm so we took the opportunity to have ice cream at the picnic benches next to:


Then the walk down to the castle:


A few photos were taken down at the castle - here's just one of them:


Walking on along the clifftop path back to the town we popped in to the War Memorial:


Further on we had a lovely overhead view of the harbour - and where we would be refreshed:


The Marine had a nice selection of ales which we would eventually work our way through:


We sat outside:



Andy had brought along his "birthday cake" - a tea loaf. Jeb was our cashier for the day - and also beer carrier:


He couldn't quite manage all 5 but it was a sterling effort to carry 4 pints.

It was a 5 pint session for most of us, the last one being while we ate our suppers - horrendously expensive fish and chips mostly.

Certainly one of the easiest walks we've ever had - we stretched it out to 2 hours but could easily have knocked half an hour off that. Here's the route and the stats:


Our pickups arrived about 6:45 pm so we were all home in good time. 

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