North-east emergency crews have been praised for their response to a landslip in a tiny coastal community.
Soil cascaded down from an embankment and onto the only access road to Pennan, famous as a location of the film Local Hero, at the weekend.
The police, fire service, Coast Guard and officials from the council were called to the scene at around 1.20pm on Saturday.
They managed to get the route down into the village reopened within six hours.
Banff and district councillor Glenn Reynolds lives in Pennan and was returning home from Aberdeen Airport when he saw scores of people working to clear the road.
He said: “My wife and I were returning to Pennan shortly after the subsidence and so could witness the operation from outside of the village, before it was made safe.
“Within an extremely short period of time we witnessed the logistical expertise of police, the Coast Guard, the fire service and Aberdeenshire Council working together in partnership and under pressure.
“There must have been over 20 service personnel in attendance within minutes.
“They assessed the situation, attended to the prospect of any vulnerable people in the village, devised a plan to remove the landslide and make safe the surrounding area.
“They also made sure that people knew what was happening and when.”
A Pennan resident, who did not want to be named, said it is not unusual for villages along the north-east coast to be hit by crumbling cliff faces.
She said: “If you live in this kind of area there is always something like this happening.
“People are pretty resilient, but it might be frustrating for anyone in a vehicle.
“There have been have landslides before and sea storms have even cracked the roads.”
An Aberdeenshire Council spokesman confirmed the details of Saturday afternoon’s clear-up operation.
He said: “We can confirm that a small landslip occurred at Pennan at around 1.20pm on Saturday, blocking the road.
“The unstable material was removed from the embankment and the road reopened at around 7pm. We’d like to thank Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for their support.”
Darren Riddell, the incident commander for the fire service, said: “Firefighters took on the wider role of ensuring residents were safe and comfortable in their homes and kept them informed of the situation.
“This was a challenging incident, but by working with our partners, the road was cleared and people in the area were able get back to normality.
“I would like to thank our partners and the wider community who worked effectively and efficiently to bring this situation under control.”
A spokeswoman for the Coast Guard said they were in the village to assist and make residents aware of what was happening.
