Just missing the well you weren’t looking for

Although I study biocultural diversity around sacred sites in Asia, and supervise students working on the anthropology of sacred sites in Scotland, I haven’t myself done much work that would allow me to compare data from Scotland to data from the Himalayas. My colleague Liz Curtis pointed me towards the astonishingly useful Canmore database of archaeological data for Scotland. A quick search on Canmore gave me a downloadable .kml file of sacred wells in Scotland. (Sacred mountains and sacred groves, which are common in Asia, are not so common in Scotland). I’ve now got a Google Earth layer of all the sacred wells documented in Canmore as a project for roadtrips and cycle rides; after the first few, I hope to discover a sensible method for measuring diversity around them. There’s a sacred well right in the middle of Seaton Park, much to my delight—–given the number of languages spoken at Hillhead Halls, and Seaton Park’s collection of unusual trees, that’s a remarkable (and very likely wildly atypical) example.

Last Sunday Eleanor and I went out for an end-of-holidays ride. I’ve been curious to know what the best way to join the old Buchan railway line, now the Formatine and Buchan Way (and NCN 1). From Donmouth where we live, the ‘official’ way would be to join NCN 1 just by St Machar Cathedral and then follow it north through a whole series of nasty periurban roads and developments through Dyce. NCN 1 is really awful in this part of Aberdeen, to be honest: it goes across endless cobbles in Old Aberdeen and then gets stuck in new developments and industrial traffic going northwest to Dyce railway station. Rather than try again to find and negotiate that route, we decided to go from Donmouth along the Scotstown Road out towards the old railway and see if there was an easy way to get onto the cycle path, probably near Little Goval or at the intersection of the B977 and the A947.

We succeeded; after a false start, where a farmer had politely indicated that their road could not be used to access the bike path, we rode on to find a layby on the A947 with access. What we feared, though, turned out to be true: the AWPR (Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, one of the largest roadbuilding projects in Europe just now) carves its way across the landscape just right where we were hoping to hop onto the bike path. The result is a little surreal: there are folks cheerfully walking their dogs, or in one case, a couple of friends under full touring packs, cycling across a massive construction site by way of a steep and rocky fenced-in corridor.

It was worth it, though. Once on the old railway line it’s a good path. We pedalled north for a while, past a piper practicing, until we were on the grade above Newmachar by the new houses at Kingseat. We sat by the path, ate our bananas and watched a boy riding his motorcycle around some fields. Bennachie was clearly visible on the other side of Newmachar.

I hadn’t used any mapping software to track our way, so when we got home I used Google Earth to plot our path and tell Eleanor how far we had ridden. When I had finished plotting our route I realised there was a tag on the map near where we had stopped. Kingseat: so called, because there is a well there where Malcom Canmore stopped for a drink of the local water and said it was delicious. It was right behind us as we sat eating bananas and looking at Bennachie. When we go back I’ll stop off and have a look, even though Canmore records the site as lost. I wonder if local folk know the story—if anyone from Newmachar happens to be reading and has heard of the well at Kingseat I’d love to know.