rocks that at calmer times rise dark from the briny deep are lost to
sight for moments in the grand onrush of the waves. The seagulls which
usually whiten them, now flutter around screaming, and the sound of
their shrieks comes in on the gale almost in a continuous note, for the
single cries are merged in the multitudinous roar of sea and air.
The village, squatted beside the emboucher of the Water of Cruden at the
northern side of the bay is simple enough; a few rows of fishermen's
cottages, two or three great red-tiled drying-sheds nestled in the
sand-heap behind the fishers' houses. For the rest of the place as it
was when first I saw it, a little lookout beside a tall flagstaff on
the northern cliff, a few scattered farms over the inland prospect, one
little hotel down on the western bank of the Water of Cruden with a
fringe of willows protecting its sunk garden which was always full of
fruits and flowers.
From the most southern part of the beach of Cruden Bay to Whinnyfold
village the distance is but a few hundred yards; first a steep pull up
the face of the rock; and then an even way, beside part of which runs
a tiny stream. To the left of this path, going towards Whinnyfold, the
ground rises in a bold slope and then falls again all round, forming a
sort of wide miniature hill of some eighteen or twenty acres. Of this
the southern side is sheer, the black rock dipping into the waters of
the little bay of Whinnyfold, in the centre of which is a picturesque
island of rock shelving steeply from the water on the northern side, as
is the tendency of all the gneiss and granite in this part. But to east
and north there are irregular bays or openings, so that the furthest
points of the promontory stretch out like fingers. At the tips of these
are reefs of sunken rock falling down to deep water and whose existence
can only be suspected in bad weather when the rush of the current
beneath sends up swirling eddies or curling masses of foam. These little
bays are mostly curved and are green where falling earth or drifting
sand have hidden the outmost side of the rocks and given a foothold to
the seagrass and clover. Here have been at some time or other great
caves, now either fallen in or silted up with sand, or obliterated with
the earth brought down in the rush of surface-water in times of long
rain. In one of these bays, Broad Haven, facing right out to the Skares,
stands an isolated pillar of rock called locally the "Puir mon" through
whose base, time and weather have worn a hole through which one may walk
dryshod.
Through the masses of rocks that run down to the sea from the sides
and shores of all these bays are here and there natural channels with
straight edges as though cut on purpose for the taking in of the cobbles
belonging to the fisher folk of Whinnyfold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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