One the things I was really looking forward to doing on my recent trip to Aberdeenshire was returning to the Forvie National Nature Reserve as I think that the sand dunes there are really dramatic and beautiful. The area is even dubbed the “Northern Sahara” due to all of the sand left after the last ice age around 15,000 years ago. The present dunes are thought to be around 2000 years old. The mud flats in the estuary are home to many types of marine life and birds.

Sand dune at Forvie Reserve
Imagine my surprise when arrived at nature reserve car park to see a construction site sporting an enormous crane on the other side of the estuary. I thought that it was a real blot on the landscape and I wondered how on earth the builders had managed to get planning consent.

The building site opposite Forvie Reserve

I spoke to a local resident out walking her dog and she told me that although there had been a lot of local opposition that planning consent had been given mainly because it was a brownfield site where there had been industrial use. Evidently the town houses in the development will have a price tag of around half a million pounds. This is truly amazing as there is still a large industrial unit on the development site, which you can see to the right of the photo with the low sun shining on one side of the building. Imagine paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for a house with supposedly great views and seeing, even partially, a large steel shed. Perhaps we can call on Forvie’s Curse, where according to local folklore, three sisters were set adrift in a leaky boat so that they could not inherit. The sisters placed a curse on Forvie, saying the it should only contain thistle and sand. The curse resulted in a fierce storm which covered the village in sand. I’d certainly rather see thistle and sand than a luxury housing development so near a nature reserve.