coast | PK PERSPECTIVE

Locations:- Broughty Ferry castle and Beach and Doune castle

Time off work and the weather quite nice. About time!!!!! To make the most of it I dragged mother out for a couple of day trips. First we went to Dundee to get an intolenance test done, only to find the shop gone, the next shop closed, the 3rd unfindable and the forth didn’t do it. Decided to accept that it just wasn’t meant to be and as the sun was out I decided to go to the near by Broughty Ferry castle so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

Although Broughty Ferry (or the Ferry as locals call it) is right beside Dundee and technically part of Dundee from 1913, which the people of the Ferry were not happy about, it retains it’s own idenity. Part of that is the rather odd looking castle which was a romantic ruin until the late 19th century when it was restored due to worries about war in Europe, and then again in the 20th century with the world wars. The castle itself dates back to 1495, but most of what you see today is military renewal. There is a story that the cannons at the front gate lay undiscovered until the 1980s when a photographer balanced his camera on the end of one of the supposed bollards only to realise it was so much more!!!

The strange looking Broughty Castle

Sea View Photo wise it is a hard castle to shoot as it looks so odd and doesn’t really fit together. The back, overlooking the Tay estuary, is very much modern history gun implacements and world war feel, but the castle itself looks like an ancient building with a slightly less anceint one stuck on the side. Bit like the Ferry sitting uneasily in Dundee. The wide lens was definately my friend, and helped encompass the feel of this odd castle sticking out into the estuary. But sometimes even the best lens can’t make the odd beautiful. However the beach, which the castle gives a great view of, was just asking to be shot. The sun was spilling onto the soft golden sand and the many jellyfish. The part of the beach nearest the castle is an animal exclusion zone, so is clean and child friendly. Walking along you reach the erosion barriers (or groynes) which used to stand proud and keep the sand in their strips from escaping to the sea. They are in ruins now and are being replaced by boulders at the back instead. However the ageing wood makes good foreground interest for photos. All in all a god day out and although the castle isn’t the prettiest it is definatley worth a visit.

The next day my eldest sister was up from Swindon so we decided to take her to a slightly sillier place. As a family we have always loved Monty Python and their quirky sense of humour so we went on a little holy grail trail and visited Doune castle near Stirling, the castle used in the Holy Grail where the french knights taunted the English knights. Now this castle is inpressive to look at and very much photogenic, which is probably why someone was getting married there and taking a very long time to get their photos taken. They were well into photos when we arrived and blocking access into the castle and 2 hours later the whole bridal party and more were still there with fake smiles and overly sweet pink dresses. Now I have done wedding photography before and never taken that long, especially with the entire wedding party and not just bride and groom. We got access to the castle in bits as the wedding moved around, which was a bit annoying and we “farted in their general direction”.

The amusing audio tour was done by Terry Gillian and had many Python jokes instilled in it. However with evryone walking around with earphones on, didn’t make it a social visit as noone was really talking to each other, just chuckling to themselves. My ear phones kept getting tangled up with my camera strap and backpack and hood and I gave up on them in the end. Finally I made it to the top of the castle where the Knights stood and taunted the English and mother hit her head in Python style to pose for a photo to send to my other sister, who replied that “her father smelt of elderberries”!

The Great hall with its’ moody light

Photo wise the castle has a lot of potential, but the main problem is that the inside is really dark so the ISO had to be put up for internal shots, but the windows did provide lovely mood lighting in bits. Outside the low sun was the enemy and kept strecking shots with sundots, regardless of new polarising filter and couldn’t put on the lens hood as it shows up in the photo as the wide lens is so wide. I struggled through though and think I got some good shots, without a shrubbery in sight, and only an occassional muffled “Nee”!!!!

Tues 1st March Ferryden, Montrose and Arbroath

The Sun was finally shining and I was finished with my Nightshifts so I arranged to meet father and head out to my beloved East coast, the best place in the world, especially when the sun is shining off the red sandstone. After picking father up in Carnoustie we decided to do a relatively flat coastal walk as I was still pretty tired from working nights and I was running a bit late thanks to mother locking me out of the garage so when I went to fill the wiper fluid I couldn’t get tot he screen wash and after searching her house for a key just gave up and put in water only!

Montrose Basin Looking Stunning in the Sunshine

Anyway me and father had a lunch in Arbroath in a very nice new cafe, turns out Arbroath is like Perth and full of Sconies (people who drink tea and eat scones in cafes all day) and the place is full of little coffee shops. As father had been up the cliffs recently we headed further up the coast and to Montrose and Ferryden. As I took the wrong turning off the roundabout (still had nightshift head!) we went to the Montrose Basin 1st, where the view was lovely and quite exotic looking in the sunshine and starting with the zoom lens I shot some of the quaint little boats floating gently in the shallow water of the Basin. Dodging the taut ropes hiding in the sunshine and trying to take our heads off we walked along to the bridges and up to the view point which neither of us had been on before although we had both been to Montrose many times. Then following my sense of direction (a dangerous business usually) we went back to the car and Dad had to admit I was right with which way to go, which is a very odd occurrence. And we nipped down the road, taking the right exist to Ferryden, passing the good ship Sarah!

After a rather tricky several point turn on a thin road with walls on one side and a steep drop on the other we managed to park up and walk the top road to the Ferryden Lighthouse, the Scurdie Lighthouse is its official name and was 1st lit on the Tues the 1st March 1870 (141 years ago to the day). Anyway The view was spectacular with the Harr giving a blurred line between blue sky and blue sea. The White of the lighthouse and near by beacons just shimmered in the light, which looked fabulous but was a bit of a photographic nightmare as even with ISO low and under exposing it kept blowing out the detail of the buildings. But i got a few shots of Lighthouse and surrounding cottages and the expanse of the North sea. We went to walk along to Usan, but the ground became too marshy so we turned back and walked back along the front to the car.

After stopping off at another Arbroath coffee shop, this one designed like a 1950s diner and just at the Auchmithie turn off, we decided as the sun was still brilliant and the day still relatively young we would have a wee walk along the Seaton cliffs at Arbroath. Now as a child I used to climb these cliffs a lot, venturing into coves and caves and through holes in the sandstone cliffs, and being caught out by the tide occasionally and needing to clamber up the cliffsides to safety. Of course I was not alone, father and my sisters were there too and now he looks back and cringes at the dangers he put us in, as now he tuts and parents doing the same with their children. But no harm done and we made it through with a healthy sense of adventure and respect for the sea and its shoreline. So walking the meandering beauty of the Seaton cliffs is always a joy for me. Photo wise though I is hard to capture as it is pretty vast and far reaching and this is hard to show in a photo. So armed with only the wide lens on the camera I decided to do panoramic shots, which isn’t always a good idea with the wide as the distortion can make it hard to stitch photos well. But I decided to give it a go anyway. Standing on the outcrops of the cliff I took a few shots along the view, making sure each shot overlapped with the next. Once back home I stitched the photos together the easy way and put it through PTGui software which matches the overlap points and puts together the panoramic shot. Which I’m glad to say turned out well, which made getting a bit muddy climbing to the outcrop off the path worth it.

So all in all a successful day in the late winter sun. Not only did I get some good shots but i also got to see the sunshine at long last and got to be on my beloved coast line, home at last!

Castlesea Bay Panoramic, 7 shots stitched together

Tag Archives: coast

2 castles,a beach and Monty Python

The Basin, The Lighthouse and The Cliffs