For as long as I can remember I have wanted to return to my Place of Birth in wildest Aberdeenshire – Scotland.

Well two years ago – at Helen’s insistence we went off on the trail from our holiday base at the Grant Arms Wildlife Hotel in Granton-on Spey.

Our search took us over the Lecht by the ski slopes to Strathdon where we felt we were getting closer …

A chance encounter with a sprightly lady of 93 years young at an outlying farm helped us pinpoint the area for she remembered it well – having watched across the fields on getting home from a dance as a teenager – she had seen the old wartime wooden cottage burn down.

A chat with another helpful neighbour pin-pointed the exact spot where the one room cottage had been —

Dalherrick Croft —

for that was where I was born – now has a splendid double garage on the exact spot —

Thanks to the warmhearted Aberdeenshire country folk our search for a needle in a haystack turned out to be so much easier than we could ever have imagined.

Much has changed now – according to my big brother that place wasn’t much bigger than a henhouse and had grass growing up through the gaps in the shrunken floorboards. A fierce wind was piling snow up against the walls and doors and dad was off in North Africa fighting for his life and country. No wonder Mum spent her next couple of years seriously ill in an Aberdeen hospital while I was shipped around available family members.

One such place I remember was my Gran’s here at Gartly —

so it was realy moving to visit mother’s family grave —

Steady on givit – or you will have even me shedding a tear next —

givitsum