Granite Countertops? How About a Whole City of Granite?

A reflection from a pond in one of the beautiful parks in Aberdeen. 

 

 

Aberdeen Scotland - The Granite City

Fiona and I find ourselves today in Aberdeen, on the north east coast of Scotland, sitting right on the North Sea.  This place used to be booming, but has hit some harder times recently, as the price of oil has dipped.  

In fact, the original oil boom of the early 1970's brought me to this city as a young lad in search of work (more below).  It is here that I met my wife Fiona, and we've come back to spend a couple days here revisiting our old stomping grounds. 

The City

For over 300 years, granite quarried from the nearby hills supplied the building material for the growing city of Aberdeen.  Although gray in appearance, this particular granite has a high concentration of mica silicate, which can make it sparkle in the sunlight.  

I tried to capture some of the twinkling granite, but it didn't come out very well.  

 

The use of granite construction is obvious throughout the city, and has earned Aberdeen the nickname of The Granite City.   Of course, this stone lasts a long time, and the most of these grand buildings have already lasted a few hundred years.  

After spending the last couple days here and looking around, I would describe this as a no-nonsense kind of place.  It has a serious, organized, well-built atmosphere about it; it's clean and well maintained.  

However, one might not describe this as lively, or creative, or inspiring.  I'm not saying it's bad here.  Some places are wild and wonderful, but they have potholes and the street lights don't work.   

Not here.  This place is ship shape. 

It was so many years ago ...

I came here forty-five years ago, broke and desperate.  I had been traveling around Europe with my friend Paul, and ran out of money, and prospects were slim.  I got a job here on the North Sea oil rigs, which turned out to be dangerous work.  

And I met a young Scottish college student named Fiona.

She and I have come back to pay a visit here and have a look around, with more travel later in the next week.   Things have changed here in Aberdeen, but also remained the same.  The place where we originally met has morphed into something much different. 

But many of the old haunts still exist, in much the same fashion as 1973 when I was first here.  This is a city not only built of granite, but full of beautiful parks.  We spent much of the day walking through them. 

There is no better way to experience a place than just walking, and we did plenty of that today.  Much to our surprise, the weather today was fabulous, sunny and almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit.   We covered almost 14 miles, and enjoyed every minute of it.

Aberdeen has been recognized as a champion of British green parks, and that's saying a lot in this country, which probably has the best parks and gardens in the world.  

We went to Johnston Park, rather on the small side, which was rated the best park in Britain a few years back.  For good reason.  It was charming and beautiful in its simplicity.  

And there was the massive Hazlehead Park, several hundred acres in size, with every ingredient a park should ever have, including a large maze.  

It's always interesting to visit a location that holds a key place in your life history.  This is one of those places.