CHAPTER VIII. 



RIVER UGIE. 



ANGLING SEASON : 25th February to 31st October. 

 NETTING SEASON : 25th February to 9th September. 



District Fishery Board sits in Peterhead. Robert Gray, Esq., Solicitor, Peterhead, 



acts as Clerk. 



THE inland parts of the district of Buchan form a flat plain, where 

 the old land surface has been worn down by great denudation. Only 

 one or two slight rises exist, one of these being dignified by the name 

 of hill the Hill of Mormond standing 769 feet above the sea. In 

 this flat or only gently undulating country the Ugie cuts its way 

 with many a winding to the sea at Peterhead. The main section of 

 the river is only some 6 miles in length, two head streams of con- 

 siderable length, though of rather small volume, uniting abruptly at 

 the Haughs of Rora, near the village of Longside. The North Water 

 of Ugie and the South Water of Ugie are about sixteen and eighteen 

 miles long respectively, the latter being named in its most inland 

 part the Water of Fedderat. The maximum length of the river may 

 therefore be said to be 24 miles. 



A remarkable circumstance about the North Water is that it rises 

 within 2 miles of the sea at Aberdour Bay in the Moray Firth, and 

 within a short distance of a burn which flows into that bay, yet its 

 waters enter the sea on the east coast as described. The appropriate 

 name of the rise in the land which determines the initial course of 

 this stream is Windyheads Hill. There is not much shelter in this 

 region, though here and there rich woods surround such places as 

 Pitfour or the old Castle of Brucklay on the South Water ; but the 

 streams are frequently cut down in pleasantly fertile dells unsus- 

 pected as the eye ranges over the wide expanse of land. Some 

 distinctly picturesque views are also to be had near the mouth of the 

 main river at Ravenscraig Castle, where the banks are steep and 



