Time doesn’t permit a long and carefully edited post this week. We are busy, one month away from our journey, tweaking and refining our study-abroad day in Aberdeenshire, which I am dubbing the “Aberdeenshire Archaeology Tour.” Many sites in this area close down for touring after October, and this necessarily limits what we can do. However, Aberdeenshire is filled with ancient sites best explored out of doors, so it’s likely this would define this part of the journey even if it were August.

Arbroath and Dunnottar

We’ll start the tour on Sunday, November 20, with an early check-out in Dundee. We’ll be traveling, mercifully, in an 18 seat coach instead of the original Covid-social-distance-imposing 50 seat monster. We take a scenic coastal road called the Angus Coastal Route on the way to our first major stop, Dunnottar Castle. Because it’s on the way, we’ll make a brief detour to Arbroath Abbey, the site of the famous Declaration of Arbroath. The building is closed due to instability — it’s a ruin, after all — but a good time to touch on an important event in Scottish history.

The morning will be spent exploring Dunnottar — we could of course spend the entire day here! After this we’ll stop for a group lunch at the Falls of Feugh near Banchory. We hope to have enough time to view the falls, but our afternoon is crammed with ancient sites. Our original itinerary included far too much, so we’ve narrowed it down to essentially three sites: the stone circle and churchyard at Midmar, the churchyard at Kirkton of Aboyne, and the stone circle at Tomnaverie.

In and around Aboyne

Readers of this journal recognize the last two sites, and Midmar is a nice inclusion. There’s a satisfying three-way symmetry between the stone circles and churchyards in all their various combinations — all sites of course preoccupied with our human mortality. The remains of cremation pyres exist at the center of many ancient stone circles, and the gravestones in the churchyards are of abiding interest to amateur genealogists such as myself.

A welcoming committee

The Scots are known for their generosity to traveling strangers — it’s a custom common in the Highlands to offer hospitality as a survival strategy in a harsh environment — and nowhere is this more in evidence than the help on the ground I’ve received from several individuals I’d like to mention here. The first, of course, is my cousin who wishes anonymity, who has helped with maps and inscriptions at the Kirkton of Aboyne, mentioned in my previous post. Logistics for getting in and around the area have been facilitated by two people in particular: Veronica Ross, the chair of the Cromar History Group, and Dr. Kathy Ader, a member of CHG and proprietor of Wild History and Whisky Tours operating out of Aboyne.

They have set up quite the reception committee for us in Aboyne! We will meet both of them as well as the owners of the the Lodge on the Loch, upon which property the churchyard sits. We should get quite a backstory about the Knights Templar and the origins of the kirk, which will amplify and extend any personal interest I have in the site, which of course is home to dozens of Cromar burials.

As a side trip between KoA and Tomnaverie, Kathy is suggesting a brief stop at the Aboyne Castle Estate, just to peek at Aboyne Castle from the outside and to see the birdcage bell-tower that capped the Kirk of Saint Adamnan at KoA. Readers of this journal will remember I discovered this a while ago, and I think it will be a terrific addition to the tour if we have time to make the stop!

Sunset at Tomnaverie (we hope!)

Our goal of course will be a sunset at Tomnaverie, weather permitting. I think this will be quite a spiritually satisfying cap to a busy day of touring ancient sites in my ancestor’s homeland.

Tomnaverie at dusk, an image found at Ancient Art at Tumblr.

Below is a map showing our full itinerary, including the leg described above. Watch for more about this journey!