shewhomust | Entries tagged with fife 2014

We had plans for Thursday evening, so we took it easy during the day, pottering around doing our various errands, taking the last chance to visit or explore or -

durham_rambler and I spent the morning disposing of recycling and doing a little light shopping. Our house had no recycling bins at all, but we had found the way to the tip earlier in the week: just past the corner where this lonely figure stood sentinel ("It's the Michelin man!" said

durham_rambler, but it isn't...).

Recycling discarded, we followed the signs to the Cheese Farm and Coffee Shop. Coffee first - and perhaps, I suggested, a little something off-diet to accompany it? "The all-day breakfast?" asked

durham_rambler. That wasn't on offer, so we had cake with our coffee, examined the menu and felt that another time this would be a place for an agreeable lunch. We bought some of their cheese: the local variety is called Anster (which is allegedly how you pronounce Anstruther, though we didn't hear anyone doing so - and something I read complicated matters still further by asserting that it's pronounced 'Enster') and is a tasty but not exciting hard cheese. I liked the younger, creamy-crumbly form better than the more mature, Cheddar-like version.

On our way into Anstruther. to do a little more utilitarian shopping at the Co-op, we passed this mystery object. It stands alone, apparently in a ploughed field, in the pouring rain, and no amount of internet search has given me any clue what it is.

Though I did find this splendid gallery of Scottish castles, so my time wasn't wasted.

I spent the afternoon wandering around Pittenweem, nosing around the shops and galleries, taking pictures of the harbour, generally enjoying myself. There were some wonderful contemporary crafts, beautifully displayed, at the The Coach House, though the item I most desired was a drawing by James Barclay, of a broken creel at Cellardyke - and that was in a curious shop, which appeared to be the downstairs of the proprietor's house, full of second-hand oddments (including a shelf of books) but dotted with reasonably serious - and seriously priced - contemporary art. Can this have been The Little Gallery? I can't tell...

In the evening we all went to the folk club in Crail - upstairs in the Town Hall, which is a very fine building. The guests were James Hickman and Dan Cassidy, and they were fine: they played very varied material, something for everyone but not really conveying any focus - I'm not complaining, as I suspect the focus of their interest is not the part of their repertoire that most interests me. I enjoyed the evening, and while I wouldn't go out of my way to see them again, I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid them, either. The club had the unusual practice of starting on time, putting the guests on for a set straight away, then after the break putting in some floor spots before the second set. Which seemed to work, and the Bears did a floor spot, so that was good.

And the next morning it was time to clear up and come home. Goodbye, Pittenweem.

...and we're home again! But first, back to the holiday posts.

From our sitting room windows we had a fine view across the Firth to the Isle of May, and in the evenings we could watch the double flash of the lighthouse. We had agreed - for various reasons - that Wednesday was the day we would take the boat trip across to visit the island, so I was quite anxious when I woke that morning to see - well, not very much: the previous day's haar had thickened to a real sea mist. But the sun soon burned it off, and it ended up warm and sunny, the best weather of the entire week.

We drove into Anstruther in time to buy tickets as soon as the booth opened, which gave us an hour and a half before our sailing to explore the town. Time to visit the bookshop, where I bought a copy of Moomin and the Sea - it seemed appropriate. Time to check out the charity shop (the only one I saw all week) and the deli, and the bakery that boasted of a recent competition triumph: "the second best fruit scone in Scotland". This rather muted superlative seems to be the local style: today I saw, emblazoned across the fascia of a sandwich shop, "Probably the best filled rolls in Fife." Probably.

It was a day of superlatives. As I boarded the May Princess I was complimented by the boatman: "Lovely t-shirt. Best one of the season so far." (It was the Icelandic puffin one, of course.) Not that the season is very far advanced, but I was pleased, anyway. The crossing was calm, but something about it made GirlBear feel very queasy, and she wasn't able to enjoy the fine display of puffins overflying us as we neared the island - "It's puffintastic today!" said the boatman.

The island is a nature reserve. We were greeted by one of the resident wardens, and given the talk: stay on the paths, don't cross the rope barriers, don't worry too much about the terns, they aren't too aggressive at the moment, we've only just found the first egg - and this was true, although later in the afternoon the Bears did observe one lady coming under attack (according to the Isle of May blog post about the day of our visit these fiece little birds have been filmed attacking polar bears).

After this we had several hours to explore the island, to circumambulate the (Stevenson) lighthouse, sitting next to the remains of the seventeenth century beacon tower - the first in Scotland. We followed paths out to the edge of the cliffs, and sat and watched the puffins:

durham_rambler has some fine close-up photos, but I was pleased with this one of mine, because you can just, I hope, make out the puffins on the top of the cliff, the guillemots lower down, and Anstruther back on the mainland. I learned a new puffin fact from the information boards at the visitor centre, too: numbers of puffins on the island fluctuate from day to day, as the puffins go about doing whatever it is that puffins do; but the numbers peak every five or six days, when the majority of the birds congregate "apparently to sort out any outstanding colony business!" it says here. "Party time!" says GirlBear.

Puffins are special, but other seabirds are also available. Have some guillemots:

I was disproportionately thrilled by the gannets: just a pair of them on the outward voyage, a group of three on our return, so white in the sunshine, neck stretched foreward, with such a lazy flap of the wings but moving so fast - no chance of a photo. Instead, a silly one of a gull sitting on the South Horn:

Also on the return trip, we sailed round Norman Rock to see the grey seals: always a pleasure. And back in Anstruther, I had time to cross the road to the museum shop, and buy next year's puffin calendar. So altogether a day well spent.

One section of our coastal walk that particularly stuck in my mind was the stretch from Kirkaldy to Dysart: after the long slog up from Kirkaldy you enter a park, and descend, looking back towards the massive ruins of Ravenscraig Castle, to a pleasant path which follows each zig and zag of the coast (the local laird was apparently determined to thwart any miner who might think to walk to work along the shore) until it vanishes into a tunnel through a spur of rock and emerges into Dysart harbour. Today we revisited that walk, and both was and was not as I had remembered.

We took the opportunity to visit the castle: it didn't delay us long, but it was a very splendid ruin, and provided fine views of the path ahead. I don't know why we didn't take the time to visit last time, except that we had a long way to go and I had the impression it was more of a detour than it was. On the other hand, the path to Dysart was as agreeable as I had remembered (this time with the bonus of a piper playing what we eventually identified as the Freedom Come All Ye) but much shorter. Emerging onto the harbour was still good, though the blue skies and high tide had made for a prettier picture.

After lunch at the Harbourmaster's House we walked Dysart's town trail in reverse order. I remember reading the boards about the Dysart Artworks, four pieces of contemorary art recently installed: but how could I not have seen Donald Urquhart's 'Sea Beams', a set of upright timbers painted a selection of tasteful shades of blue? On this visit, they struck my eye as son as we entered the town, yet I had no memory of them at all.

It's less surprising that - as we pursued our journey along the coast - we didn't see some of Dysart's splendid buildings (like all these Fife towns, it has an impressive tollbooth), or realise that the park where we had started our walk continues, and becomes a beautiful - and beautifully maintained - arboretum. This is the setting for another of the artworks, Alec Finlay's 'Nest Boxes', a dozen nesting boxes each bearing a crossword clue. What I liked about this was that it gave us a focus to walk around the arboretum looking at the trees. By the time we had had enough, we had round half a dozen of the clues, and solved three of them (sample: 'Bird on board' = 'rook'; no wonder they didn't have the cheek to attach one to the monkey puzzle!).

And home via the Co-op, cups of tea, dinner, the internet - where does the evening go?

I would like to record that last night's strawberries, bought from the farm shop as 'Pittenweem Strawberries' were among the best I have ever tasted, despite also being among the biggest.

On our first visit to Fife,

durham_rambler and I managed to walk within a few miles of Kellie Castle without knowing it existed; a medieval castle renovated in the Arts &Crafts style in the 1870s, and again in the 1940s by sculptor Huw Lorimer, and only a few miles from Pittenweem (via the recycling centre): the perfect Sunday excursion. We arrived before the castle itself was open, which gave us time to follow a walk through the grounds, starting in the woods where the wild garlic grew thick among the trees, and emerging into the meadow which opened out onto a view of the Firth of Forth. Then into the walled garden, where the apple trees were in bloom - yet somehow my best picture seems to be of one of the twenty-odd varieties of rhubarb growing there (still, look on the bright side: a runner-up is a picture of the wild garlic and potato soup I had for lunch).

After lunch we toured the castle itself, where they ask you not to take pictures. The volunteers were all extremely friendly, and very keen to show us everything and find the right notes to answer our questions. There were also a couple in eighteenth century dress who introduced themselves as the fifth Earl of Kellie and his wife Janet, and told us how he had participated in the '45 uprising, and about their son Thomas,the sixth earl and a noted composer (widely known as 'Fiddler Tam'). This was all interesting in itself, but also a useful counterweight to the material we had seen so far, which placed all the emphasis on the artistic Lorimer family who had rescued the castle from decay - from the rooks and owls who nested in its chimneys - and decorated it with a large and not entirely successful Phoebe Anna Traquair (I preferred John Henry Lorimer's Sunlight in the South Room, Kellie).

This morning was brighter, and we took the coast path to Saint Monans: it's only a mile or so, past the windmill and the salt pans, along the harbour to the far end of the village. We'd have lunched there if we could find anywhere to eat, but we couldn't, so we came back to Pittenweem and ate soup at the Cocoa Tree.

The rest of the afternoon was sitting around reading the papers, going shopping, down to the beach at the far end of Lower Largo (delighted to see that the area is twinned with Robinson Crusoe Island, Juan Fernandez, Chile) and watching the waves for a bit - the tide was so high and there was very little beach visible, and the wind was fresh, so we came home.

Have a bonus picture from St. Monans - I'm quite happy with this one:

durham_rambler very kindly dropped me and the Bears in Cellardyke, so we could walk up the coastal path to Crail, then drove on to Crail, left the car then and walked back to meet us - it's a stretch of the path on which we seem doomed to reverse polarity.

Interesting to be retracing the same route, passing the same landmarks, but in May instead of October. It's too early to say whether the weather is better: last time we had more sunshine but also some heavy rain; today the skies were the softest gray, the air was warm and slightly sticky, and I thought it would rain before we reached Crail - but it didn't, and the haze resolved into clouds, and the sky was still not blue, but brighter at least.

What I hadn't been expecting were the spring flowers: as we followed quite a narrow strip of green along the rocky shore, there were riots of red campion, the occasional spike of purple orchids, green pillows dotted with little white flowers (this might be sea sandwort), buttercups everywhere - though the daisies didn't have their eyes open yet. "Have you seen any bluebells?" asked

durham_rambler when we met him. Just a few, in the hedges as we left Cellardyke. "Ah," he said, and when I rounded a corner and saw the hillside lapped in blue, I saw why.

The image I didn't capture in pixels was the narrow inlet, the silver water running up between the dark rocks on either side, and the heron silhouetted just at the edge of the sea - I barely saw it before he took off.

After lunch in Crail, we visited the Museum (because it was open). It's tiny, and quite limited, but I liked the set of weights and measures, much like those in Durham's guildhall, gleaming metal engraved in elegant copperplate script. There was a helpful attendant who shared our enthusiasm, and pointed out the standard yard, lying on the floor. Later I heard him telling a family that there was a typewriter upstairs - and was amused when I went upstairs to the dislay of farming implements to find two small boys competing to type on a perfectly ordinary (though admittedly not electric) Olympia typewriter from - what? the 1970s? On the staircase were a number of rather unremarkable oil paintings with a notice explaining that they had been left to the museum by the sister of the artist: the words "They were a present, what could we do?" were not actually used, but could easily be inferred.

By now we were running out of steam. A little light shopping (the wholefood shop is new since I was last in Crail, though the bookshop has closed, and is for sale), and the walk back to the car were enough for us - we didn't visit the Pottery or the Gallery.

So that's what we did today. Which of tomorrow's many possibilities will we choose?

A good night's sleep. with the sea murmuring below the windows, toaster and cafetiere successfully wrangled to produce a satisfactory breakfast, and a soft, almost sunny morning spent exploring the village, all left me feeling much more sanguine. We strolled out to the point where the coastal path heads off to St Monans. There's a reason why those bluebells yesterday looked such a deep and surprising blue: they are a different flower, more thickly clustered on the stem, the petals more curled...

We took the scenic route into Kirkaldy, pausing in the village of Colinsburgh to admire a very striking Town Hall, and a magnificent library. We collected the Bears from their train, and paused on the way out of the station to chat to someone they knew from London, who had managed to travel up on the same trains and only meet at the very end of the journey. There were supplies to be gathered for the evening meal, and we confused the sat-nav by visiting an Aldi which had not been there when she was programmed - which was fun, but not as much fun as the Ardross Farm Shop.

By the time we got home, it was high tide, and I went down to the end of the jetty to take this picture: our house is the pink one in the corner:

We - which for the time being is just me and

durham_rambler, but tomorrow there will be Bears - are in Pittenweem.

We didn't - now, there's a surprise - set off as early as I had hoped, but we got away, and if we left anything essential behind, I haven't found out yet. We had lunch at a garden centre in Ponteland, and then shopped for essential supplies at Waitrose. The road up through Redesdale is beautiful, there were distant views from Carter Bar, there were green hills and different shades of yellow a scattering of dandelions, the deep gold of the gorse, the acid day-glo yellow of the rape fields - and an occasional clump of bluebells quite shocking in contrast.

On the outskirts of Edinburgh we switched on the sat-nav. She's quite old, and getting a bit cranky, but since there were warnings of delays on the motorway we followed her instructions. So we were rather taken aback when, half way across the Forth Road Bridge, she broke her silence with "Recalculating."

This is our house. It is, as you can see a fabulous location, and an interesting old house with lots of character. This is the sort of sentence structure which anticipates a 'but', isn't it? Ask me again at the end of the week: by then I'll have got used to some of its foibles. At the moment I'm thinking that there are things that aren't ideal, but that are inevitable given the shape of the house and the nature of the conversion: the big first floor room has to be the sitting room, with the sea visible through windows on three sides, so if you want to fit in two double bedrooms one of them has to be on the ground floor, which means the kitchen is tiny and food has to be transported up to the sitting / dining room... And like that. And the way to make me feel that it's quirky, but never mind, is to make sure that it's well-maintained and supplied. Perhaps there are more towels than I have so far found; there are, after all, additional dishcloths, and I have substituted one for the pillowslip which was hanging on the oven door. Maybe there are some matches, but it would be helpful to leave them by the gas hob with a note explaining that the ignition doesn't work and you'll need them - we eventually found this information in the folder. "We use a lighter or matches", it says. So will we, when we've bought some matches. Fortunately I like my broccoli crunchy.

"Don't you like it?" asks

durham_rambler, and in many ways I do. But I'd like to have fallen in love at first sight. And of course I found the house, so I feel resonsible, and what if the Bears don't like it? And did I mention that having arrived first we have pinched the nicest bedroom, upstairs? I suppose we can offer to swap at half time!

Oh, it'll be fine, and we are right on the harbour, and there are lots of things I'm looking forward to doing and places I'm looking forward to going, and we'll have fun together...

And now is not the time I want to wrangle with a new-look LJ!