The Instagrammables

There's a place I've wanted to visit for a long time after seeing a picture of it in a book in the 1990s. It's an obscure place on the banks of Scotland's least-known big river, the Findhorn, twisting from secret gorge to lovely meadow then disappearing round a bend of rocks and trees to suddenly... this.   

Ardclach Church: 

We wound down to the river where a man greeted us at a church. It turned out he owned it. It was no longer a viable place of worship having been flooded out at high water too often, but he was working to restore it and rent it out for weddings. The only trouble was the sheer number of day-trippers down this dead-end road. Over a hundred sometimes!

 

I must have looked surprised, but he told us of hot days and recent drownings at this seemingly idyllic spot. It turns out, thanks to Instagram, Ardclach is no longer obscure. Social media has made a star of the church's bell tower. Because of the church's position down in a hollow, the bell to call parishoniers to worship, or to warn the neighbourhood of a raid, is placed not on the side of the church but up the hill, reached along a pleasant ride.

Ardclach Bell Tower:

The bell tower is a perfect miniature fortified Scottish tower house, so it's not surprising it is now better known than it used to be. 

Thanks to Instagram, places which once recieved almost no tourists - the Fairy pools on Skye, or the 'Wailing Widow' waterfall on the NC500 - now draw them like iron filings to a magnet. (And places which were already well-known, like the Quirang on Skye, are overrun.) Yet though our friend at the church worried about the popularity of this spot, its very picturesquness, we felt, would be the factor that will drive the success of his business.

On the way to Ardclach Bell Tower:
 

There are still 'undiscovered' places in Scotland, but they are fewer than they once were...