Bennet Hill

Coastal erosion at Burgh Head, in this case shown by giant blocks of (Triassic) Burghead Sandstone which have broken off along bedding/fracture planes.

Telford House is a Category A listed building, and though occasionally referred to as a former granary online, looks to have been just a large harbour warehouse. It has now been converted into four flats, at least one of which is a holiday let, and access is from Granary Street to the rear. The official listed building write-up mentions storage of coal, timber and food, but also manure, which seemed rather unusual. It turns out that the straightforwardly-named Morayshire Chemical Manure Works used to be based in Burghead in the late 19th Century, and probably beyond then too. The exported fertilizer was mostly a mixture of ground animal bones and guano (bird droppings). On a sombre note, the shirts that can be seen attached to the railings beyond the steps in the distance are there to commemorate the life of a teenager, who judging by the epitaphs written on the shirts, took his life fairly recently by jumping from the cliffs there.

I had always thought that the famous civil engineer, Thomas Telford, was from Shropshire in England; as well as having a hand in numerous projects round there, the town of Telford is also named in his honour. However, it turns out that he was born near the small town of Langholm, in Dumfriesshire, SouthWest Scotland, and this is the reason he was also involved in so much construction North of the border. He was so prolific that his overseeing of the building of this harbour doesn't even get a mention in his long Wikipedia entry. It was built in the very early 1800s, though there were subsequent alterations by others at three points later that century. The North Pier, which is at the top of the picture, has listed building status, along with two buildings just out of shot to the right, one of which is named after him. For some reason the quayside on the left is called South Pier, though I always thought that at least some of a pier had to be jutting out into the sea, so maybe some of the land directly behind it is reclaimed. There were a dozen or so boats moored when I visited, though as it was early afternoon there could well have been more out at sea. There is still a very small fishing industry here which is mainly focused on langoustines, from what I can gather. These look like large prawns but are apparently more closely related to crabs. The 'burgh' in Burghead is pronounced like the 'berg' in iceberg, as opposed to how it sounds when at the end of a placename (eg Edinburgh, Fraserburgh).

The nearest one is the Valiant, a rather nice fishing boat conversion.

Although most of the WW2 Shetland Bus operations were based in Scalloway, Shetland, earlier operations were based in Burghead.