‘It’s not just our houses’: can a Scottish village save Queen Elizabeth’s coastal path from the waves? | Coastlines
WHen Charis Duthie moved to Johnshaven with her husband in 1984, she could cycle along the coastal path outside the village. Now, she meets a dead end where the sea has snatched the land and is rather welcomed by a large sign of red warning from what will happen: coastal erosion in danger.
“You can see gardens that were there and now they left,” she says.
The northeast coast of Scotland is experiencing a rapidly aggravated erosion problem which will only be exacerbated by recurring peaks of extreme time and the increase in the sea.
Johnshaven, a small village with a very united community of 640 people about 30 miles (48 km) south of Aberdeen, is particularly exposed.
The village paths carry the scars of coastal erosion in the form of craters in the well whipped rock, while some, like the one that Duthie points, have completely disappeared. The last one was taken from the village in 2023 during one of the many extreme winter storms.
Finding a solution to the problem has taken an emergency like never before. Three years ago, the announcement of the Jubilee Path Platinum, appointed in honor of the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II on the throne. The objective is to start in Saint-Cyrus, four miles south of Johnshaven, and to end at around 90 miles further north in Cullen, a village with narrow associations with Robert Le Bruce.
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Johnshaven, on the coast of the sea of northern Scotland, will attract more visitors if it has a well -maintained coastal path
With the markets that have traditionally fueled its economy – fishing and oil and gas – by decreasing, Johnshaven wants to attract more visitors through the plans of coastal paths. The objective is to be one of the large trails in Scotland, which offers a card of trails named and accessible on foot around Scotland. Currently, there is a gap in the map along the northeast coast between Aberdeen and Dundee, and Johnshaven is in the middle.
For Dothie, 71, helping to fill this gap is an increasingly intimidating task. She is part of a small team called the Mearns Coastal Heritage Trail (Merchat) who works to restore and create coastal paths in Aberdeenshire. But as they work in one area, the sea stops in another.
“Much of what we are trying to do is preventing erosion with rock armor, which is really the only secure method,” she says.
Rock armor, sometimes known as Riprap, is made up of large rocks and rocks placed along the coast to protect against the waves.
To complete the areas of the trail, Merchat had to gain funding through subsidy requests. The MacPhie food ingredient company has donated £ 30,000, and an additional £ 40,000 come from the Crown Estate Scotland by Crown Estate Scotland, money, money allocated by the government to help coastal communities to “prosper and strengthen their attraction as places of life, work and visit”.
Caspar Lampkin, project manager for the coastal paths of Aberdeenshire at the Benholm and Johnshaven community council, says that the help of the Aberdeenshire council is likely to be minimal. “They told us that they had nothing to do anything,” he said.
“If the small villages want something to happen, it must be directed locally, because we are not going to get a lot of aid from the government or the local council.”
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Caspar Lampkin, the project manager of the Community Council for Coastal Paths, is trying to obtain funding to help counter erosion
Since April, Duthie, Lampkin and the Merchat team have been working to establish a way to request designated funding. “We have now launched a charity called the North East Scotland Coastal Trust [Nescat] And we paddle very quickly so that everything establishes and go there, ”explains Dothie.
Meanwhile, another problem beyond access to beautiful landscapes is increasingly urgent, explains Lampkin. The Community Council has identified 100 houses in the village at risk of flooding the sea in the coming years if no measure is taken for erosion.
Although the work of the team is behind the restoration of the paths, he says that any funding they get will probably have to be used on rock armor in areas that could protect the accommodation along the way.
Angie Dunsire, 74, does not travel more than 10 steps from her door before reaching the eroding coast.
She has lived in Johnshaven for 32 years on the beach aptly named Beach Road. She says that she receives an Applémental Agency Protection of the Scottish Call whenever there is a risk of flooding.
While Storm Floris approached in August, they called. “You have to be careful and listen to,” she says. “We had a bit [of water] In [the house] The other day because if it is a high tide, it’s stormy and there is wind, these elements blow it. »»
Dunsire is afraid of what the North Sea is capable of. In the distance, there is a reminder. Miltonhaven sits just three kilometers from Johnshaven – or what remains.
It is reported by Duncan Fraser, in the book Portrait of A Parish, written in the 1970s on the parish of St Cyrus, that Miltonhaven was taken by the North Sea after the arrival of Robert Scott de Dunninald in the village in the 1700s.
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The remains of the “lost” village of Miltonhaven, formerly a lively coastal community populated by smugglers, lime workers and fishermen. Photography: Andrew Diack / Geograph.org.uk
“What first drew his attention was the limestone rock that extended into a reef across the bay, like a natural breakwater keeping the small angry sea village,” writes Fraser.
Scott came from a family that built lime ovens to produce fertilizers for the fields. From 1750, Scott removed most of this limestone rock for his business, so the story goes, leaving the village exposed.
In the 1790s, Fraser wrote, the waves had taken the “whole village”, which is now 100 meters from the shore.
In an effort to correct some of these wrongs so easily visible from the past, the section along the Beach Road of Johnhaven will be the first objective for Rock Armor with any funding that the community can bring together. But Rock Armor is expensive – about £ 1,000 for a small truck – so it is likely that there is not much left for the construction of paths.
“People say, well, it’s just your houses why go to all these expenses?” said Dunsire. “Well, it’s not just our houses, it’s the road that passes through the village to the park and further on.
“We are supposed to use the coastal path and the extension. [the land and road along the coast] go?”
A Scottish government spokesperson said that he had provided local authorities with 11.7 million pounds sterling to support the adaptation of coastal changes, while the Aberdeenshire council says that its overall coast protection budget is £ 75,000 and that there is no new protection work in Johnshaven. He indicates that support and advice have been provided in the implementation of Nescat and that it is not aware of any problem with the Beach Road part which belongs to the Council.
