30.09.2011 – 30.09.2011  14 °C

Spent last night in the Aberdeen YHA and spent the whole day wandering around the town of Aberdeen. Aberdeen is known as the granite city and it is pretty obvious why it has earned this nickname.. all of the buildings are either clad or built out of grey granite!!

The hostel is a good 40mins away from downtown so I spent the first part of the day just walking down to the main part of town (all the while admiring the surrounding buildings!). I started my day by going and seeing the maritime museum. Aberdeen was built upon North Sea fishing. Today, the town thrives on North Sea Oil.. how the times change! In fact, much of the fishing has had to be scaled back due to declining fish stocks in the sea . The museum outlines the history of the oil industry in the north sea with a passing note about fishing and boating…. (it was fairly obvious who was funding the museum and it wasn’t the local fishing community!)

The museum wasn’t really my cup of tea so after spending half an hour or so wandering through the rooms I moved on to take a walk through the old part of Aberdeen. My journey took me passed the house of Provost Skein. A ‘Provost’ in Scotland is the town’s mayor and back in the mid 1700s the town’s mayor was a man by the name of Skein. His house was saved from demolition and is one of the few remaining houses in Aberdeen from this period of its history. The house has been reborn as a museum and many of the rooms have been refurbished in the style of the time. I found the nursery the most interesting. Apparently, one of the rooms high in one of the turrets of the house was set aside as the children’s nursery. The stair case to get up to the nursery is a very narrow, winding, stone stair case.. I found it difficult to get down the stair case holding onto the hand rail with both hands! I would hate to think what it would have been like for the nurses to have come down these stairs carrying a child on one hip and maybe something else in the other!!!

From the Provost’s house I continued my walk down into the old town (which is probably 20min from the main street). The old town is home to the University of Aberdeen. Like many of the very old Universities here in the UK the buildings of this uni are pretty special to look at! The main ‘Kings College’ (I think all uni’s here in the UK have a ‘King’s Hall or King’s College!’) has been in use since the late 15th century. I especially liked an old sign that is still displayed on the wall of the college that tells all students that ‘walking on the grass at the new building of King’s College is an offence and offenders will be liable to a 2s 6d fine!!!’ I found this sign highly amusing once I realised that the grassed area in question was currently populated by almost a hundred students who were all lying/ sitting in groups talking!!!!! (By the way, if anyone knows what a ‘d’ stands for please let me know!)

A little further along the main street of Old Town Aberdeen is the church of St Markar. It is thought that a church has resided in this location since maybe as early as 500 AD and that it is one of the first churches to be built on the British Isles! The current church was built in the mid 1300s and is probably one of the nicest (although certainly not ornate) churches I’ve been in on this whole trip. It is very simplistically styled but I think this is what I actually like about it! The columns that hold the roof up are made of rough-hewn stone blocks that have been carefully placed together to form columns.. Just amazing! There is also an ancient Pictish stone block that was found in the church graveyard that it is believed is dated back to the time of the original church. I guess what really made my time in this church so special was that one of the choir boys was playing hymns on the grand piano.. I was the only audience and I was able to enjoy it in such beautiful surrounds… Aaahh…

I rounded out my day by spending it back in town buying a new camera as my old one had finally given me the “willies” one too many times.. 500 pounds later (damn) I walked out with a new toy that I then spent the rest of the evening playing with!