Domalanoan Montrose Coastal Rowing starts our voyage on Montrose Basin. The basin defines the town of Montrose and dictates the rowing here with 750 hectares of tidal mudflats in a sheltered estuary. The Basin fills and empties through a stretch of river less than 100m wide which scours a deep harbour and produces a fast tidal stream under two bridges, limiting access to and from the sea to a short period through a busy commercial harbour.
Gevrai
The row begins along the rocky shore to Usan, one of the last sites in Scotland of the salmon netting industry, and on towards the massive limekiln at Boddin and the Elephant Rock arch. We know that the shore we row along is rich with plants – Kidney Vetch (which supports a community of the rare Small Blue butterfly), Ladys Bedstraw, Wild Thyme, Nottingham Catchfly – and the sea is busy with cormorants, terns and gulls. Harbour porpoise and dolphins are often seen and the humpback whale breaching and blowing just offshore a couple of years ago became a local celebrity. We don’t see dolphins today but there are plenty of seals and to our great surprise several Peacock butterflies fly by from the open sea, heading towards land. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been startled, knowing the great journeys beautiful migrants like this make and it seems a privilege to see these light and fragile insects finishing what may have been a much longer journey for them than ours will be today.
We pass the long and lovely beach of Lunan Bay, punctuated by the ruins of Red Castle. The beach gives way to the cliffs at the old fishing village of Ethie Haven. From now on, the shore is dominated by cliffs with few opportunities to make land. We pass Red Head, the highest point and the Deil’s Heid rock stack until a brief rest at the harbour at Auchmithie to change crew. In the eighteenth century the laird of Red Castle, Lord North Esk, seemed to consider the fisher folk of Auchmithie as his belongings when he tried to use an ancient feudal law to prevent many of the fishers moving south to Arbroath, taking their recipe for smoked haddock with them to become the famous Arbroath Smokie. Like the fishers we leave Auchmithie behind passing Carlingsheugh Bay to come into Arbroath. As we row along the town front we must have passed the position where in 1781 privateer William Fell, under a French flag, tried to hold the townspeople to ransom to the tune of £30,000, threatening to bombard the town from his vessel unless paid. It was easy to evacuate people further inland beyond the range of his guns however and Fell left with very little to show for his venture.
Of course Covid-19 has prevented us getting out this year but we’re looking forward to the boat and coastal rowing becoming a part of the Montrose community once again as soon as we can get out safely.