Stonemouth

A few minutes later, the train crosses the Stoun on the old grey granite bridge. From here — though you’re just ten metres or so above the river, right where it starts to widen for the basin and the estuary — there’s a wide, clear, open view between the remnants of the tree-bare water-meadows, the marshes and the salt flats towards the docks and the harbour. Past those is the town itself, with its grey-brown clutter of buildings, spires and towers, edged by the bright flat plain of water with its tarnish marks of cloud shadows and ruffled fields of wind shear, and beyond that the road bridge, rising grey and tall and shimmering in the east, astride a silver glimpse of sea.