B9021

The B9021 Harbour Road

The B9021 is a short unsigned link in the village of Portknockie on the Moray Coast. It starts inconspicuously on the A942 towards the western end of the village and briefly follows Church Street, before doing a full U-turn around the end of a terrace into Cliff Terrace and so on to Harbour Road. The harbour itself is reached by Harbour Road, at the bottom of a very steep bank. To get to it, traffic has to fork left (the continuation straight ahead is Harbour Terrace), negotiate a tight hairpin and descend the steep slope to the shore, where the road opens out at the southern side of the harbour. Moray Council describes the B9021 as including the descent to the harbour, but most maps agree that this is not the B9021. Large scale OS mapping shows it ending, somewhat surprisingly, at the hairpin. Due to the limitations of scale the 1:50000 map gives the impression of it ending, more logically, at the corner beside Rock House where Harbour Terrace meets Patrol Road.

History

The original line of the A942 (formerly B9019) through Portknockie actually took a longer route around town, running along Harbour Road and Commercial Road. As such the B9021 was at one time considerably shorter. The scale of the 1922 MoT map makes it difficult to read the detail, but it does seem to show it going down the brae from the former B9019 to the harbour.

The 1922 MOT Road List defines this route as: Branch to Portknockie Harbour