Torry Battery – Harbour Dolphins and a Window Seat
A few hours.
The route
Bottlenose dolphins come into the mouth of Aberdeen's harbour to feed all year round, and you can watch them from the Torry Battery, the old granite gun battery on the headland above.
On a good day they're jumping and playing right where the ships come in. The Greyhope Bay Centre inside the walls pours coffee beside big windows over the water, so you can keep watching with a warm cup in your hands.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
The day
Torry
An hour on the ramparts above the harbour mouth, scanning the water for fins as the ships come and go. Then it's a few steps inside to a window seat and a coffee, still watching the sea.
About two hoursAbout 0.5 miles on foot
Torry Battery
An attraction
Torry Battery, a granite gun battery built in 1860, stands on the headland on the south side of Aberdeen's harbour mouth, looking across the water to Footdee. Greyhope Road from Torry is shut to cars, so drive in from the south, past Girdle Ness lighthouse. There are three car parks by the Battery, with disabled spaces in the upper one by the archway. Bottlenose dolphins from the north-east's resident group feed in the harbour mouth all year, and Greyhope Bay says they're seen here on most days, with seals, porpoises and plenty of seabirds too. A calm, flat sea makes them far easier to spot, and gulls and gannets diving over the water often show where they are. Inside the walls the ground is rough grass and gravel, and the wind off the sea is cold even in summer, so bring layers. Dogs are welcome round the coast.
Greyhope Bay Centre
Coffee and cake
The Greyhope Bay Centre is inside the Battery's walls, and its café looks straight out over the harbour mouth through big windows, so you can keep watching for dolphins over a coffee and a slice of cake. It's open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4.30pm, and shut on Mondays and Tuesdays; it has closed for part of the winter before, so look at its website before a winter visit. Dogs are welcome, and both toilets are accessible. If it's full, Cairn Coffee's hatch on the Beach Esplanade across the harbour, round by the bridge, opens Friday to Sunday; on a Monday or Tuesday, bring a flask.
If it rains
The Greyhope Bay Centre's café has big windows straight over the harbour mouth, so on a wet day you can watch for dolphins from under a roof, Wednesday to Sunday.
Photographs by liwen chen, Swaroop Gururaj and Greyhope Bay Centre via Google