Bow Fiddle and a 2nd recce of Maw Craigs ( Crovie)

[Gordon Ballantyne]

Rose at the ungodly hour of 4am to catch the low tide at Bow Fiddle.
Managed to get out the door by 5am to have a traffic - free drive up to Portknockie with my minder and photographer - GC.
Wrong - the A96 was shut at the Insch turnoff for repairs, so we followed the diversion signs untill we met a queue of traffic at a bridge over the railway. Some of the vehicles started to turn round and one stopped to tell us that there had been a Bus/car collision and the road would be shut for an hour. We followed the others and diverted off the diversion via Auchleven, then back on to the A96 - fretting about missing the low tide at Portknockie.
Misplaced fretting as we arrived in plenty of time and parked up near the joiners shop.



Bow Fiddle
( check the tide tables for Portknockie - today Low tide was 06.50am and 0.6m )

Parkup by the joiners workshop at Portknockie for Bow Fiddle

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Using Dave McG's intel, I wasn't expecting the ascent to be too difficult, but took some gear in case I needed help on the descent. Also Dave is a stellar climber and sometimes these kinda guys find these things trivial, but I needed some insurance for my advanced years
Took my sack down to the beach and tooled up. GC had decided that his rope skills needed polishing up, so elected to be my minder and photographer.

Tooling up for Bow Fiddle

The start of Bow Fiddle

Managed the easy slabs ok. The green band seemed to be weeping water from within, rather than the high tidemark that I'd supposed it was. Anyway sloping cracks gave easy access to the summit plook.

On the slime band of the Bow Fiddle slabs

Contemplating BF's summit plook.

Bow Fiddle - Ya beauty

GB's summit salute on Bow fiddle

True to his word, Daves grading of Diff was spot ont, so didn't impede progress. Soon I was atop the summit plook.
Couldn't see GC down below so posed for a wee while then rigged a prussick handrail for the descent.

Descending Bow fiddle's plook.top

Pause descending Bow Fiddle

Retrieving the rope on Bow Fiddle

Pulled the rope down and re-jigged it round a spike to secure me over the slimy bit lower down. Unfortunately it jammed, so I had to go back up to free it. I wondered if I was being too safety-conscious, which ended in too much phaffing. Anyway, got down ok and met GC lurking behind a big rock, out of the edgy breeze.

Trying to free the rope - unsuccessfully

Returned to the viewing bench above and greeted an early morning artist heading down to the beach to paint/draw the Bow Fiddle.

GB's "I was there" pose.

Minder and chief photographer GordonC.

We left him to it with our pixilated records stored in GC's wee camera.
Took about an hour to get up and down including all the phaffing with the rope.




Maw Craigs - recce 2

The lower car park ar Crovie

Drove along to the lower car park at Crovie and walked round the edge of Law Hill to the shallow gully to the W of Maw that we'd sussed on our previous visit. Descended to the beach through burnt gorse and steep grass at the bottom, disturbing a roe deer, which darted off round the corner at high speed.

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Descending the shallow gully to the W of Maw Craigs

The tide was coming in by this time, ( we were 2.5hrs after low tide at Gardenstown ) so we nipped round the corner into a wee mini-cove out of the breeze, then over some jumbled boulders to get a view of the Maw stack. The rocks we'd seen last time between shore and stack were mostly submerged by now, but we verified we could access the bottom of the shore opposite the stack from here.
The easiest line looks up the crest of the stack which is facing W towards where the photo was taken.
(see previous blog entry on 15th July 2020 )

Above the mini-cove W of Maw Craigs

Nearer Maw Craigs

Maw Craigs from beyond the mini-cove

Near the top of the shallow gully for Maw Craigs

Scuttled back over the rocks in the mini-cove which were now awash with every 7th wave.
Regrouped, then ascended to the top of the cliff and back to the car.

Drove home via Morgans for a celebratory brunch - bacon roll and coffee.

[dav2930]

That looks great. Pretty decent pixelated records too!