Walk 3: Eathie Haven
Miller’s marvellous Jurassic era ammonites which he found in his youth on the Eathie foreshore kick-started his subsequent career as a geologist, and his descriptions of them in The Old Red Sandstone and My Schools and Schoolmasters make wonderful reading. Recommended as a day’s outing, you turn off the A832 opposite Newton Farm, signposted to Navity. A lay-by gives access to a well-maintained track down to the shore. There, you can turn north, passing Devonian fish beds en route to the Eathie Burn, whose section map Miller made famous in the annals of natural science. The ravine also inevitably supplied him with a couple of scary fairy tales.
Photo courtesy of Andrew Dowsett Turning south, you will come first to a well-restored former salmon bothy, containing information panels on the shore’s natural history, geology, and salmon-fishing past. Further along, you reach the shale beds which can still yield to collectors samples of the Jurassic creatures which so enthralled Hugh Miller.
The track is steep, and the shore-walking in both directions rough, but the cliff, shoreline and marine flora and fauna make this an inspiring place, with the great eras in the earth’s history which Miller first brought to public notice, awaiting your own curiosity and wonder.
(Use this link to get a map of the walk to Eathie shore from the Walk Highlands website)
Eathie Haven Display