Marykirk.com

08/06/2026

31.7km, 6 hours 45 mins, 2,700 calories, 43,000 steps. Yup. We did it!

26/05/2026

A week on Sunday, I'll be joining all the other Kiltwalkers, on the 18 mile walk from banchory to Duthie Park in Aberdeen. My good mate Steve McDonagh persuaded me to re-create some of our former glories - specifically the time a bunch of us did the Great Glen 90 mile walk.

18 miles, I thought. Piece of p**s.

Oh. Boy. Was I wrong. The longest walk so far has been 18km - around 10 miles. So I'm still way short of target distance. It's not puff (I quit smoking 666 days ago!), or stamlna - thanks to Michelle Milne's PT in Mearns Fitness - but my feet. And their ability to form enormous, painful blisters.

So. If you know me, and would normally buy me a pint - feel free to donate some dosh for Macmillans. We all will know someone who's been affected by the big C, so it makes sense to help those folks who help our folks in their time of need.

Go on. Lob some more money in, so I don't chicken out. I'll even name my first blister after you...

---* Bill

Help William Buchan raise money to support Macmillan Cancer Support

21/04/2026

Some days, the internet just turns round and bites us.

EE phone subscribers can use a thing called 'wifi calling' so their phone works using a wifi network. This is handy if the signal is weak, or your house has thick walls.

This is something that's been working for years and years. So we were quite surprised last week when it stopped working on our network.

It's been quite difficult to get a hold of anyone at EE in order to get to the bottom of the issue - we're still trying. But we have an interim fix.

If you've not reported issues about this to us - please tell us by emailing [email protected], and tell us that your EE wifi calling is broken.

Please do NOT comment on this post, or DM us via facebook, as we don't do support over facebook - it's quite insecure.

10/04/2026

It’s our honour and absolute pleasure to be at the wedding of Martin and Alana. Such an amazing couple.

01/04/2026

We're proud to say that we've been picked by our suppliers to try out some new Wireless Internet Service Provider technology. This new dish gives us a top speed of 2,000Mb/s in both directions!

Here's the pilot site, up Glen Esk:

01/04/2026

We just had a 4 minute network outage - from around 8:34 to 8:38. This was caused by a fault within the BT Exchange in Stonehaven. We think it's because they're testing generator fail-over in the exchange, and our suppliers' battery backup in the cabinet didnt work.

We're working with our suppliers to get to the bottom of this and how to prevent this happening again.

UPDATE 1. Second outage around 9:10am this morning.

UPDATE 2: Both our engineers and the supplier engineers are in Stonehaven exchange, and have swapped out the faulty UPS unit.

18/03/2026

Just a quick note to say that Bill, the owner/boss (or so he thinks!) at Marykirk.com has volunteered to do the Aberdeen Kiltwalk, in aid of Macmillans.

If you've ever met Bill, you'll understand that Physical and Exercise are words that he's never used. So the prospect of an 18 mile sponsored walk in June is terrifying him!

He's in week 3 (out of 14 weeks) of training, so wave if you see a middle aged, short round wee man puffing up the hills.

And feel free to sponsor him, so it's far less likely he'll bottle out on the day:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/billbuchan-1772279171971?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LFCFRUK_Badge_10thDonation&mi_u=18894902&mi_ecmp=LFCFRUK_Badge_10thDonation

Help William Buchan raise money to support Macmillan Cancer Support

22/01/2026

Yesterday, between 4ish and 5ish, we experienced a number of issues with the internet - inaccessible sites, 'glitchy' frame rate, and so forth. Liam and I searched our network for any issues - and we found that on the wider internet, Microsoft and AWS sites had been knocked out.

Another ISP somewhere in the world had published 'routes' to Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, which resulted in some very large inter-ISP networks - including Hurricane Electric - being very confused as to how to get traffic to Microsoft and AWS. And since the world practically hosts the internet on those two infrastructures - carnage.

A group of us Scotland based ISP's share a group chat, and very quickly the big brains on that chat established the issue, and implemented workarounds. By around 5:30pm UK time, the original ISP had removed their broken configuration change and the world returned to normal.

It may seem very strange that an illegal update to configuration on the other side of the planet would cause this - but that's the modern internet for you. It's surprisingly brittle.

There's slightly more information here:

No access to meetings, documents and more

15/12/2025

Phew. Busy week - 10 fibre installs.

Want fibre at your property? And our award winning customer service?

“Fibre to the Premises” BroadbandWe are Marykirk.com - a rural Internet service provider, providing service to Aberdeenshire and Angus, since 2013. We cover 800+ properties, over 400 square miles.We can install Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) Broadband - offering up to 1,000Mb broadband internet co...

20/11/2025

It's difficult choosing between broadband suppliers.

Go for a large suppler, pay not a lot, and then wonder what happened when the service breaks - spending weeks yelling down the phone.

Or find a local, award-winning, industry-certified, quality supplier with seven day service, engineers you can actually talk to, and with a wireless backup service.

That'd be us. Over a third of our customers are now on fibre, and we're always expanding both our wireless and our fibre customer base. So give us a shout at https://www.marykirk.com/sign-up and see if we can help you.

Order soon to get decent, supported broadband before Christmas.

Can I get this service?Please fill in this form if you are interested in receiving Marykirk.com service. We will then check that we can provide service (using a map-check), come along to your premises and do a site survey, and suggest installation costs. We can then schedule your installation date.T...