To The Bin My Friend,…
…Tonight We Vacate Earth.
The 2021 Mogwai album ‘As The Love Continues’ opens with these lines. Now, all Mogwai track names are weird and, as they’re predominately an instrumental band, hardly ever relate to any lyrics, so I didn’t really consider what ‘The Bin’ was, or could be, until visiting this part of Aberdeenshire where there exists, just a few miles west of Huntly, a 312m high wooded hill called ‘The Bin’. There are Bins all over Scotland, the word - related to Ben - means hill or mountain, but I can only find one called ‘The Bin’, everything else is Bin Hill, Byne Hill, Bin of ‘X’, etc. Whether ‘The Bin’ is the one referred to in the track, or whether it’s another Bin that the band refer to I’ll leave to them.
The Bin is a beautiful, forested hill with a number of different graded walks around it including the one to the top where a pool of water with health giving properties was supposed to exist; we could not locate a pool and while the name of it is shown on the OS map a pool itself is not shown. It has a mix of woodland but is mainly covered in Scots Pine and Larch. There is an abundance of ferns and mosses, and all over a broad range of different funghi - I don’t think I’ve seen so many varieties of mushrooms and toadstools ever. Fortunately we caught it on the best day we’ve had up here so far.
Photographs taken with Fujifilm GFX50Sii, GF23mm and GF 45-100mm lenses, except top photograph, taken with Google Pixel 4XL