A Wind and Wuthering Day

‘Tis Christmas Fayre season, and given the many creatives up here, some of them can be quite good.  Some of them are not, but that’s half the fun.  Pennan, of ‘Local Hero’ fame, was having theirs in Pennan Village Hall.  Being the third Saturday in the month, it was also the pastry-fest that is the Foggie Farmer’s Market.  Decided to go to both, and used the AA roadmaps book to find a pretty drive from Aberchirder to Pennan.  Living on the edge.

It's always colder inland, Aberchirder was no exception, so got pastried-up with a plum and apple Danish, and left straight after. 

The countryside is cosily multi-coloured this season, some fields still pink-gold scrubbed-up corn, some mauve-brown freshly ploughed, others a 5 o’clock shadow of new green shoots.  It’s been so mild recently; the gorse is flowering yellow.  In November!  The colours are a mish-mash, like someone has used up all their leftover yarn to make crochet squares. 

Towards Pennan, ominous clouds, and drove through pouring rain.  But it was moving quickly, heading east, and soon the light and dark of the day, the cold sea air was heady.  Stopped the car, had hill-top tea, Danish and an overwhelming feeling of joy.  It’s a landscape that makes you feel fully alive.  Like Cornwall, but colder. Black silhouette trees carved into curves by Heathcliff winds.

The road down to Pennan makes you feel glad you’re still alive at the end of it.  Super-steep and narrow, you arrive facing the sea. 

The waves were full of joie de vivre too, and the glory of it all was so wonderful, I didn’t want to leave. 

Craft Fayre; amongst others, there was one amazing potter, another, slightly unstable, person expressing herself through the medium of self-hardening clay. 

And a photographer called ‘Focal Hero’.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal

https://www.pennanvillagehall.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DB-uJ0TxKQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Hero_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_%26_Wuthering

https://www.nethermillholidays.co.uk/millshore-pottery/