Qualla: Pennan https://qualla.com/pennan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Pennan https://qualla.com/pennan Pennan: Introduction https://qualla.com/pennan/ Photo credit Tom Jervis, CC BY 2.0. There is a red phone box at Pennan. It stands on the quay where a single row of harled cottages meets the harbour, and on a quiet morning in 1983 a Texan oil executive named Mac MacIntyre placed a long-distance call from inside it. The film was Local Hero. The village was renamed Ferness for the script. Forty-three years later the village is still called Pennan, the phone box is still red, and visitors still queue to lift the receiver. The signal Mac was trying to send carried across the Atlantic. The signal a modern visitor needs - a mobile bar - still does not reach.

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Image: Tom Jervis | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/gfq2-pennan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Pennan: A Village of Three Surnames https://qualla.com/pennan/ Photo credit Bewahrerderwerte, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pennan came into existence as a fishing village in the 18th century, on a narrow shelf of land below the cliffs of the Aberdeenshire coast. The earlier name for the site, recorded in 1587 as Pennand, may come from a Brittonic root meaning head, end, or promontory - the same root ...

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Image: Bewahrerderwerte | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/gfq2-pennan-a-village-of-three-surnames.mp3 0:06 2 full Pennan: Bill Forsyth Comes to the Coast https://qualla.com/pennan/ Photo credit John Allan, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1982 the Scottish director Bill Forsyth was scouting locations for a film about a Texas oil company trying to buy a Scottish village to build a refinery. He wanted a place that looked impossible - a settlement perched in a way no planner today would allow, hard against the cli...

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Image: John Allan | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/gfq2-pennan-bill-forsyth-comes-to-the-coast.mp3 0:06 3 full Pennan: The Phone Box on the Quay https://qualla.com/pennan/ Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the film Mac MacIntyre keeps in touch with his Houston office through that single red phone box because he has no other way out. He places his calls into the small hours, the lights of the village behind him, the sound of the sea everywhere. The box was a working K6 - the clas...

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Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/gfq2-pennan-the-phone-box-on-the-quay.mp3 0:06 4 full Pennan: The Cliff Above https://qualla.com/pennan/ Photo credit Thomas Andy Branson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Behind the row of cottages the cliff rises sharply, and that cliff is not entirely stable. In 2007 a major landslip sent rock and earth down onto Pennan, damaging the village and reminding everyone that the shelf they live on is a temporary geological arrangement. Further inland ...

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Image: Thomas Andy Branson | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/gfq2-pennan-the-cliff-above.mp3 0:06 5 full Pennan: The Millshore Stone https://qualla.com/pennan/ Photo credit Pete White, CC BY-SA 2.0. Just west of Pennan, at the bay called Mill of Nethermill, lies the Millshore Stone - a 125-kilogram natural granite lifting stone that is now part of the small but global community of Scottish lifting-stone traditions. The stones - boulders that fit the body in a particular way ...

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Image: Pete White | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/q/2/pennan-wp/gfq2-pennan-the-millshore-stone.mp3 0:06 6 full