Portsoy

Contacts
HM Duncan Mackie (also HM of Macduff) 01261 832236 , Mob 07747 020496, VHF #12

This is another harbour run by Aberdeenshire Council and the Harbour Master at Macduff looks after it. It is another small drying harbour of interest to the yachtie who is exploring this coastline in a bilge keeler with time to spare and is a Mecca for yachtsmen all around this coast at the end of June for the Portsoy Festival when boats from as far away as Orkney (and sometimes the Faroe islands or Shetland) in the North and the Forth in the South gather here on the last weekend in June for the Portsoy Traditional Boats Festival. There will not be a Portsoy Festival this summer (2021)

https://stbfportsoy.org/

If you are looking for a quiet spot don't turn up that weekend because it is an endless celebration to which not just the yachts turn up but the whole of the drinking population of this coast!

Again, this was a thriving fishing village in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The old harbour was packed with boats landing herring to be transported to the South by rail. The railway pushed through to here in 1884 linking it with the mainline at Keith. It was closed by Beaching in the 1960s and traces of the old railway line can be seen running parallel to Church Street and Low Street (but you'll have to look over the wall!) down to the harbour.

Portsoy has a fascinating history and is possibly one of the earliest on this coast to have had a harbour. Way back in Tudor times (when Scotland existed as a separate entity to England) there was a small harbour here which was rebuilt in the early 17th century and that harbour is largely the "old harbour" you see here today. Until the fishing industry went mad in the mid 19th Century this little harbour had a good import export trade and the remnants of that can be seen as some locals still have a small trade in Portsoy "marble" (a form of serpentine) which they carve into jewellery and object d'arts. Some of this marble can be seen in the palace at Versailles in Paris!

The arrival of the herring boom necessitated the building of the new harbour in the early part of the 19th century but this was wrecked in a storm and had to be rebuilt thirty years later (which seems to have been the case for most of the harbours on this coast at one time or another as the winter storms have to be seen to be believed)

So, what we have today are two small harbours, both drying, to the left and right of a narrow, north facing channel. Shelter in both of them is good but the entrance is impassable in strong NW to NE winds. The village behind them has very old restored buildings which get newer as you proceed inland. Some of the 18th and 19th century buildings/warehouses/mills around the harbour remain virtually as they were built. It has a wealth of pubs/hotels, some down on the harbour, others further inland up Church Street. At the top of Church Street you come to Seafield Street where you will find most of the shops, though, if you just want a paper and a pint of milk there is a shop on "The Square" at the top of North Street a short hop from the harbour.