Cairnbulg: Wild flowers around the Monkey Pole and Blin May's grave

Cairnbulg Harbour at Westhaven, Fraserburgh and Kinnaird Head Lighthouse on the horizon across an almost unbelievably blue sea

The bents stretch westwards towards the water of Philorth, and Fraserburgh Bay on a beautiful late summer day it was hard to imagine what grim scenes the bents  have witnessed in the past.

The 'Monkey Pole' with the former coastguard lookout station in the background. This is  Cairnbulg Briggs have claimed many ship wrecks, the wreck of the Sovereign which went down in 2005 still lies a little offshore.

The Monkey Pole was used for practice in using a breeches bouy by the 'Rocket Brigade',  the local RNLI volunteers, who went to the aid of ships in distress. A volunteer would climb the Monkey Pole which was used as the target at which the rocket carrying a thin rope was fired, as if to the mast of the stricken ship. The volunteer perched on the pole would catch the rope which enabled the breeches bouy to be set up between the 'ship' and 'shore' so that the crew could be hauled to safety. The life saving equipment  was installed  at  several fishing villages in the area in 1826 and was last used at Cairnbulg in 1985

The 1849 cholera epidemic was the first and most severe of two outbreaks of the disease, the second  was in 1866, and had a devastating effect on the population of  Cairnbulg, the disease is thought to have been introduced by the crew of a boat which had returned from Montrose where they had been collecting  mussels for use as bait. The disease was described as being a particularly virulent form which struck great numbers of people down very quickly, many were apparently healthy when the went to bed but had died by morning. As was the norm in most communities at that time, sanitation in the villages  left much to be desired, 'ash pits with noisome refuse stood at every door, and cesspools with foetid gasses lay all about poisoning the air. In such circumstances it was no wonder that the plague spread among the inhabitants like a forest fire'. (Robert Wilson; 'George Mathieson, Schoolmaster, a Memoir') Those who could fled the village, others who could not afford to do so - especially after a bye law was passed in Fraserburgh forbidding anyone from taking in relatives from the infected area - lived some distance from the houses in unturned boats on the shore. So many people died that it was difficult to find anyone to carry the bodies over to the kirkyard at St Combs. This and a reluctance to carry infected corpses through the village may explain why Mary was buried on the bents. During  the 1849 epidemic  the Inverallochy dominie, George Mathieson, having refused an offer of accommodation at Rathen Manse,  turned the school into a hospital and invited the visiting medical officer to stay in the schoolhouse. Together the two men  worked tirelessly to treat patients and, in Mathieson's case, to clear the streets of refuse and provide practical  domestic support to families where the parents were ill. Mr Mathieson used what he had learned from the earlier outbreak to help again when a less severe outbreak occurred in 1866. After each outbreak the parishioners expressed their appreciation of the dominie's actions by making a presentation to him.

The bents already have a distinctly autumnal look, many wild flowers clearly being 'past' with characterised by withered  ragwort and silky drifting thistle seeds. However, there are bluebells still and everywhere patches of heartsease pansies  (Viola tricolour) which flourish on the sandy soil of the dunes.

In damper areas there were the spears of flag iris, the flowers long gone but replaced by  huge seed pods.

Among the iris the aromatic leaves and mauve flower head of water mint  (Mentha aquatica) 
We searched in vain here for the most beautiful and elusive of all the late summer flowers, Grass of Parnassus which occurs in  a few favoured damp spots along the coast.

The Water of Philorth estuary. At low tide it is just  possible to take a short cut to Fraserburgh along the beach rather than going round by the road bridge upstream near Cairnbulg Castle.

An old Belger saying reflects this:

'Saun i sey ooot (Sand if sea out)
Brig i sey in (Bridge if sea in)

On the opposite side of the Water of Philorth we were rewarded by finding a familiar colony of delicate 

Grass of Parnassus (Parnasia paulustris)