Borough Briggs is the home of Elgin City FC.

This is the reason we made the trip up north in April. I had never visited Borough Briggs. And the mighty Sons of the Rock had a game there.

(Of current SPFL grounds the only ones I still have to visit are St Mirren Park, Paisley (I was at St Mirren’s old ground in Love Street,) Victoria Park, Dingwall (Ross County) and Central Park (Kelty Hearts,) though there are some others I haven’t photographed since it was a long time ago.

During World War 2 a pillbox was built on the west terracing (called, I believe, the Bank.) See here. Those nefarious Germans could have attacked from anywhere after all. Sadly it was demolished as part of the conditions for Elgin joining the SFL, as it then was, in 2000.

Borough Briggs from road:-

External facade:-

Opposite view from first above:-

East Goal:-

North enclosure from entrance gate:-

Main stand from east terrace:-

Inside North Enclosure, with west terrace beyond:-

Borough Briggs east Tterrace from North Enclosure:-

Main stand from west terrace:-

I featured Forthbank Stadium, home of Stirling Albion FC, in 2011.

In March last year I took more pictures of which only the two below are substantially new.

East stand from car park:-

Looking north from east stand:-

Townhead Park is the home of Cumnock Juniors FC.

My visit here was the reason why we were in Ayrshire last October, Sons trip to Cumnock for the Second Round Scottish Cup game.

Centenary Gates, Townhead Park, Cumnock:-

Turntiles:-

Social club. To the extreme end of this can be seen the ramp down which players go to reach the pitch from the changing rooms:-

East end goalmouth:-

East Terrace:-

Looking north:-

View of main enclosure:-

Goal at west end:-

Looking east:-

George Morton Family enclosure:-

View from west end:-

I don’t know when I’ll ever get down to Stair Park, home of Stranraer FC again (I saw Sons play there in 1971!)

However I found on the old internet this cracking view (on Facebook from Scarlett Visuals) of the ground from the air. You can find it here.

I also found this view of the turnstiles:-

Edited to add: sadly the links to these photos no lnger work.

Dudgeon Park is the home of Brora Rangers FC who play in the Highland League.

Welcome sign on wall:-

South goal and East Enclosure:-

West Stand and pitch from south:-

Southeast corner and West Stand:-

Harmsworth Park, Wick, is the home of Wick Academy FC who play in the Highland League.

The ground is situated towards the south of the town beside the A 99 road.

I photographed it during the close season hence the lack of goalposts.

From gate at north side:-

Fuller view from gate:-

From west south west, showing the Main Stand on the north side. You can see the pitch has an appreciable slope in two directions:-

Looking south east. Showing the covered enclosure:-

Balmoral Stadium is the home of Cove Rangers FC.

In April I took the chance of visiting it to see the Sons play there (possibly the last time that would be possible for some time since Cove were on the way up and we were on the way down.)

The ground is modern, kind of soulless and located at the far end of an industrial estate.

Stadium from distance:-

From approach road:-

Closer in:-

Floodlights etc from external south west corner:-

Stand from south west corner:-

North enclosures from just inside entrance:-

Eastern goal and terrace:-

Eastern goal arae:-

From north east corner:-

From southeast corner:-

Stand:-

https://almax1.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/gayfield-1.jpgGayfield is the home of Arbroath FC.

In May 2018 Sons played Arbroath in the semi-final of the Tier 2 relegation/Tier 3 promotion play-offs. We won there 2-1 and drew 1-1 at home to reach the final where we lost in extra time to Alloa.

Since then it’s fair to say the two clubs’ paths have taken very different courses.

The next season Arbroath absolutely strolled to promotion. Their sojourn in Tier 2 has been even more successful than ours. They have already reached the promotion play-offs this season and might even finish first being only one point behind with two games left – one of those a difficult one away to Kilmarnock, the only team above them.

It’s a magnificent achievement for a part-time club in these times but their performances this season should make them able to approach the game with no trepidation – and the pressure ought to be on Kilmarnock as favourites and a full-time team.

As for us, we could easily be relegated to Tier 4 in our forthcoming play-offs.

The photo below, showing Gayfield in all its lower league football ground beauty, is taken from a private blog I frequent.

Edited to add: the embedding of the photo no longer works.

But you can view it here.

It’s that time of the year when people post ‘best of’ lists.

This isn’t a best of, merely a list of the books with Scottish authorship or Scottish flavour which I read this year. A round 30, of which (since Scotland in Space was an anthology* containing stories and articles** by both men and women) 14½ were by men and 15½ by women, 28½** were fiction (Snapshot being about Scottish Football Grounds.)

The Corncrake and the Lysander by Finlay J MacDonald
Light by Margaret Elphinstone
Snapshot by Daniel Gray and Alan McCredie
And the Cock Crew by Fionn MacColla
A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh
Ringan Gilhaize by John Galt
The Gates of Eden by Annie S Swan
Close Quarters by Angus McAllister
Vivaldi and the Number 3 by Ron Butlin
End Games in Bordeaux by Allan Massie
The Gleam in the North by D K Broster
A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
Scotland in Space Ed by Deborah Scott and Simon Malpas
Being Emily by Anne Donovan
The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
Their Lips Talk of Mischief by Alan Warner
The House by the Loch by Kirsty Wark
Summer by Ali Smith
Glister by John Burnside
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
The End of an Old Song by J D Scott
The Rental Heart and other fairy tales by Kirsty Logan
Republics of the Mind by James Robertson
The Dark Mile by D K Broster
Highland River by Neil M Gunn
The Clydesiders by Margaret Thomson Davis
The Last Peacock by Allan Massie
A Day at the Office by Robert Alan Jamieson

That last one was of course my final (unless I ever get round to Trainspotting) book on the Best 100 Scottish Books list.

I am part way through George Mckay Brown’s collection of short stories, Hawkfall, which would make the above sex ratio of authors 1:1 but am unlikely to post about it here before the New Year. (I’m four behind as it is, though one of those is for ParSec.)

* It was also the only one to be SF or Fantasy.

On our visit to the town last March we also had a look in Dumbarton town centre. The Artizan Shopping Centre has seen better days. That day many of its premises did not have tenants. Covid can only have made that worse.

Some of the empty units had been brightened up though by having huge photographs of Dumbarton Rock pasted onto their frontages. These are crops of the photos I took of those huge photos.

The Rock is a beautiful sight, isn’t it?. And that’s a lovely sky.

This cracking shot of Dumbarton Rock and Dumbarton Football Stadium (aka The Rock) was posted in 2020 in a blog I follow:-

And this view was in a newsletter from Dumbarton FC:-