The exact spot at which the coastline north from Aberdeen turns to run west towards Inverness is debatable. But one contender must certainly be Cairnbulg Point, two miles east of Fraserburgh and immediately to the north west of the village of Cairnbulg and its eastern neighbour, Inverallochy.

Cairnbulg Castle, to the south west of the village, can trace its origins back to the 1200s and fishing communities were well established on this coastline by the 1500s. In the 1850s a visitor noted that the villages on the coast were little more than collections of huts next to which fishing boats were dragged out of reach of the tide.

The 1860s brought cholera to the area. The inadequate housing made the epidemic worse and it was later cleared away to make room for planned fishing villages at Inverallochy and Cairnbulg and, a mile or so down the coast, at St Combs.

The much larger new villages were needed to cope with the boom in the herring fisheries, and by the 1880s well over 200 fishing boats operated from these two villages. The settlements were built as fisher cottages set in rows, gable end to the sea to minimise the effect of storms. The spaces between them were used to shelter the boats dragged up out of the water.

Today the houses remain but most of the boats have gone. Some leisure craft use the tidal harbour at West Haven half a mile to the west of the village and overlooking Fraserburgh Bay. But by the end of the 1800s most fishing activity had moved to Fraserburgh's much more sheltered harbour. Getting the fishermen from their homes in St Combs, Cairnbulg and Inverallochy to Fraserburgh presented a problem that was solved by the building of a light railway linking the three in 1903.