When Charis Duthie moved to Johnshaven with her husband in 1984, she could cycle along the coastal path out of the village. Now, she meets a dead end where the sea has snatched the land and is instead greeted with a big red warning sign of what is to come: Danger Coastal Erosion.
Which would have been predicted at the time. And yet they still bought a house there?
“You can see gardens that were there and now they’re gone,” she says. The north-east coast of Scotland is experiencing a rapidly worsening erosion problem that will only be exacerbated by recurrent patterns of extreme weather and rising sea levels.
And rather than moving a little further inland, there are people working to try to halt this!
Finding a solution to the problem has taken on an urgency like never before. Three years ago came the announcement of the Platinum Jubilee Path, named in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne. The aim is for it to start in St Cyrus, four miles south of Johnshaven, and end about 90 miles further north in Cullen, a village with close associations to Robert the Bruce.With the markets that have traditionally fuelled its economy – fishing and oil and gas – dwindling, Johnshaven wants to attract more visitors through the coastal path plans. The aim is to be part of Scotland’s Great Trails, which offers a map of named, walkable trails around Scotland. Currently, there is a gap in the map along the north-east coast between Aberdeen and Dundee, and Johnshaven sits in the middle of it.
Awkward!
For Duthie, 71, helping to fill this gap is an increasingly daunting task. She is part of a small team called the Mearns Coastal Heritage Trail (Merchat) who work to restore and create coastal paths in Aberdeenshire. But as they work in one area, the sea snatches land away in another.
Is the penny ever going to drop?
To complete areas of the trail, Merchat has had to gain funding through grant applications. The food ingredients firm Macphie has donated £30,000, and a further £40,000 has come from Aberdeenshire council’s allocation of crown estate Scotland cash from the Coastal Communities Fund, money allocated by the government to help coastal communities “flourish and strengthen their appeal as places to live, work and visit”. Caspar Lampkin, project officer for the Aberdeenshire coastal paths on Benholm and Johnshaven community council, says further help from Aberdeenshire council is likely to be minimal. “They’ve told us that they don’t have the resources to do anything,” he says.
Learn your lesson!
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