Balaclava Bar, Fraserburgh

The first heat of this year’s Metal to the Masses, we took our stuff a hundred miles north to the historic fishing town of Fraserburgh (known as The Broch), on Scotland’s north-east coast.

We arrived a bit behind schedule so didn’t get to see much of the town, but a quick walk around the harbour and a first class tea at Findlay’s legendary chip shop set us nicely for the evening.

The poet George Bruce, born in Fraserburgh, wrote often of the place, and you get a real sense of how northern and separate it feels, from his poem “Kinnaird Head”, named after the northernmost tip of Fraserburgh.

That line, “rejecting the violence of water,” says a good deal about the proud spirit of the town.

Kinnaird Head

I go North to cold, to home, to Kinnaird,
Fit monument for our time.

This is the outermost edge of Buchan.
Inland the sea birds range,
The tree’s leaf has salt upon it,
The tree turns to the low stone wall.
And here a promontory rises towards Norway,
Irregular to the top of thin grey grass
Where the spindrift in storm lays its beads.
The water plugs in the cliff sides,
The gull cries from the clouds
This is the consummation of the plain.

O impregnable and very ancient rock,
Rejecting the violence of water,
Ignoring its accumulations and strategy,
You yield to history nothing.