In Search of a Local Hero

I am determined to see the tiny fishing village of Pennan which was the site for the filming of the 1983 film, Local Hero, featuring that wonderful music by Mark Knopfler. It is located on the north east coast of Scotland near Banff.

I get slightly off course on the way and stop for lunch at Forres where there is a beautiful park teaming with flowers. This country is a floral delight, every other house and business has baskets of trailing petunias, lobelia, tuberous begonia, geraniums, barcopa etc., hanging from decorative hooks on the front of the building. There are wine barrels full of flowers, window-boxes, troughs, barrows, all a perfect cornucopia.

A sign to a Pictish stone has me off on the bike once more, and after marvelling at this huge and ancient relic, I just have to cycle on a bit further, to the next village in fact. And then back along a quiet road with farmland on either side. How easy it is to get distracted!

I arrive back at the car to find there is now a piper playing under a tree in the park. It's all a big story book!

Off again to find Pennan before they turn the lights out.

I have been warned that Pennan is at the bottom of a very steep hill but when I see just how steep my courage almost deserts me.

No, I've come all this way, I'm going down! And I do. When I emerge at the bottom of this treacherous descent, in the tiny village which consists of one street backed into the cliffs, I find the place full of visitors. Hardly a parking space left. Someone has even driven a boat on a trailer down that hill!

It's all here, just as it was in the film, with the exception of the telephone box which was moved for the filming and then put back in its rightful place afterwards. The beach scenes (Ben's beach) were filmed a long way away on the west coast near Mallaig.

I stroll along the beach and poke around the little harbour and look at all the picturesque houses then pour a cup of tea from my Thermos and sit beneath towering rocks looking out to the North Sea and wonder what it could possibly be like to live in such a remote place.

My landlady tells me later that the village was almost wiped out in a landslide in recent years. I can well see how that could happen.

I make it back up the hill without meeting anyone coming down, a piece of good fortune for which I am most grateful. The thought of having to back down to let someone pass was giving me palpitations.

On the subject of hills, I must report that this Peugeot 207 is a gutless affair, I'll be glad to return it at the end of the week. I think Jeremy C. would be scathing in his criticism.

I crawl exhausted into bed after twelve hours of driving, cycling and dilly-dallying around. Tomorrow it's off for a bit of 'Nessie' spotting at that most famous of all lochs, Loch Ness.