07 July 2025: The Highs and Lows of Living with dementia in a Rural village of Scotland

In this blog, one of our Pledge members shares a vivid and honest picture of life in a rural Scottish village, Cruden Bay. With under 1,000 residents and few local services, the blog highlights both the warmth of a close-knit community and the challenges of rural living — from poor public transport and limited healthcare access to unreliable broadband and social isolation.

Through their involvement in Empower, the author reflects on how we can all learn from different perspectives. Just as it’s hard to imagine city life from a rural place, it’s also difficult to understand rural realities without living them. Empower has helped bridge that gap — showing that being part of a community is essential for building understanding, whether around dementia, geography, or identity.

What Empower Means To Me

By Martin Robertson

As many of you know, I go on about rural inequities. However, because I’m curious I looked up the population of London; it amazed me to find that it is more than the whole population of Scotland. This got me thinking; my brain never stands still. I totally accept that I have no idea what it is like to live in a city, let alone be an ethnic minority; unless I go into Aberdeen, which I try to avoid, I never see any ethnic minority faces. This must be hard for some to believe. However, I turned this thought around and now accept that many folks will not fully understand the highs and lows of real rural living, so I thought I would describe my village and our culture.

Cruden bay has a population under 1,000. You either know someone or one of your friends knows someone else in the village; this means you can’t be catty about anyone as they will soon hear. However, when we first moved in we used this to my advantage as I stagger, due to my dementia, when walking the dog; initially folk thought I was drunk, but we went to the village gossip and now everyone understands; even the few electric car drivers accept I might walk in front of them. As I rarely walk outside the village, I feel perfectly safe.

The village is ten miles south of Peterhead, thirty miles north of Aberdeen. On one side of the main road is the golf course, on the other side are the houses of the village. The wind off the North Sea is ever present, so we never get heatwaves.

Look at a video of the village beach by clicking here

Due to the offshore oil industry most of the village is relatively well off financially: there is one area of deprivation consisting of about five houses. Considering there is nowhere to go, and nothing to do for the kids in the village, there is no real crime: the locals get in uproar about planters being moved, that’s it. We quite often leave our garage door open all night; nothing is ever taken. We do have a drugs problem exacerbated by oil money, but no dealers in the village as they would be so obvious.

One would think, the oil industry having such a big presence they would help the community; I know of no assistance. Our local health board is having to make £28million of cuts this year alone. Our GP is five miles away, not on a bus route, so for those who can’t drive paid taxi is the only option. Our local hospital is Aberdeen royal, which is one step away from special measures; sometimes a&e patients have to go to Dundee, seventy miles away as ours is too full. As it is the royal is thirty miles away, with all nearer triage centres closed. I will write a further blog regarding the state of health and social care in Scotland, concentrating on dementia.

We are lucky if one car an hour passes our house an hour although we are in the biggest estate. The main street is not much busier as the next village is five miles away passing fields on bendy roads. Two miles away is the road from Aberdeen to Peterhead, 24/7 with oil related traffic but we never hear it. Just across it is the biggest unmanned defence radar in the UK, so it must have ultra-fast broadband; we are lucky to get 5mps. There are so many contradictions like this. We live ten miles from Aberdeen heliport, the busiest in the world due to oil, but we only hear about five a day.

Main_Street,_Cruden_Bay_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96769

This reliance on offshore work is hard for those left behind: three weeks away, three weeks home, with the possibility of going out on one days’ notice with a zero tolerance to alcohol and drugs obviously. Many relationships falter, but there is no counselling available, and the gossips are quick.

The village has one primary school, a post office and a small, expensive, shop. The nearest supermarket is in Peterhead, our buses are very unreliable. There is no free public meeting place now the library has closed so no social groups unless you can drive: like many elderly we can’t do that much anymore. Only the pubs which aren’t private.

I hope I have shown that, although I would not live anywhere else, living rurally brings its own set of problems to all ages. Empower has forced me to realise that unless you are part of a community (be it rural, ethnic, etc) an outsider can never truly understand the day-to-day realities.