Aberdeen

In Autumn 1979, I moved to Aberdeen to start work on a new project mapping seabirds at sea. Aberdeen was booming due to the North Sea oil industry, and an amazing amount of offshore construction was also occurring. The concern about the effects of offshore oil spills had generated my job. The pedal north from Montrose was fast as it was partly on the main road that bought all the materials and personnel northwards in the 1970s and 1980s, but is now far less used. Aberdeen was also a major fishing port with a daily fish market. There are more or less no fishing vessels working from Aberdeen these days.

In 1979, our team of four working on seabirds at sea were allocated a basement in the Nature Conservancy Council office. I spent a lot of time at sea, but on land I initially shared a flat in Colville Place with Tim, a friend of mine from Hedon who was studying at Aberdeen University. Shortly after we moved in, I went to a party of one of Tim’s friends at the University and met Anne. A very good introduction, that has lasted!

In the early 1980s, I moved into Anne’s flat in Nigg Kirk Road. My main memory of that time was trying to produce maps of our seabird observations using Aberdeen University’s mainframe computer. I had written a long Fortran computer program to do this, but it needed all of the resources of Aberdeen University’s computer to run, and thus had to be run at the dead of night. I had to use a dial-up modem with a telephone coupler on a portable terminal that used thermal paper (no screen) lying on Anne’s living room floor. I could not see the results until the next day when I would pedal across to the University computer centre and collect the maps. Of course I made many mistakes, which meant yet more work in the middle of the night.

After a while, Anne brought a house in Abbey Road, while I moved to a house to the north-west of Aberdeen – Hillhead of Clinterty. This was owned by an Aberdonian Heather, who was an art lecturer in Manchester. John (who I visited in Silverdale) had a link to Manchester and we could rent the house for most of the year, except the summer holidays when Heather would use it. It was a very fine location, but could be very cold.

In summer time I would either stay with Anne in Abbey Road, Torry or for one year in a flat owned by my friend Hew also in Abbey Road, but for much of the time I was away at sea.

Just around the corner from Abbey Road lies the current JNCC Aberdeen office in Inverdee House. Being the middle of the seabird counting season (and a Friday), only a few staff were in when I called by – luckily one was my friend Sonia. We had a tea and lunch together.

Regrettably I could not stay long because, as I was entering Aberdeen, I had hit a pothole very badly (I could not swerve to avoid it due to traffic). That pothole broke my rear wheel (two spokes pulled right through the rim), and I was keen to try to get it replaced while I was in Aberdeen. After two “we are too busy” phone responses, Holburn Cycles said that they could probably help – and help they did. John, the mechanic there, found a second-hand perfect replacement rear wheel in his workshop and within 20 minutes of arrival I was back on my way again. Exemplary service once again from the cycle shops of Britain. Holburn Cycles are going to get more trade from me!