shewhomust | Entries tagged with fife 2023

Happy birthday,

durham_rambler!

In a properly organised world, we would be spending today going out and having fun. In this world, the fun we had planned is not open on a Tuesday, so we will do that tomorrow instead - before D. arrives for a few days. Today is grey and damp. Maybe tomorrow will be brighter...

Meanwhile, remembering last summer - not actually a very sunny day, but Culross Palace brings its own sunshineL

I've been thinking about plans for a spring trip to Galloway, and about things I wanted to post about our visit there last summer. But this is not that post, because I was distracted, while sorting through some photos, by this glimpse of the house we rented in Pittenweem earlier that summer:

You could call it "Self-portrait with bears," and certainly it was the bears that caught my eye to begih with. You find all sorts of things in holiday cottages, and a soft toy or two isn't really surprising, but this abundance - bears and oels and hedgehogs, oh, my! - was exceptional. Then I noticed that one of the bears (the one waering purple satin) had fangs ...

But the real joy is the books. Not the Merriam-Webster, though you never know when you might need a thesaurus. I can't remember what the Alan Garner was, but the top two books in that pile are Joan Aiken's Night Birds on Nantucket and Diana Wynne Jones' Wilkins' Tooth. That's a well-furnished room.

The biggest news of the week is that the Council came on Monday and collected their plastic barriers. We were very glad to have these while there were no railings to stop people falling off the pavement onto our area, but now the repairs are completed - indeed, were completed more than a month ago - we are very glad to be rid of them.

I believe there were some by-elections, but any pleasure I might feel at the government losing two seats by a spectacular margin is eclipsed by the realisation that yes, they really are going to conclude that the Tories held Uxbridge because of the Low Emission Zone, so they'd better abandon that idea. Message to Sir Keir Starmer, if he happens to read this: if half the people who voted Green in Uxbridge had thought they could trust Labour to implement those green policies you have postponed - you'd have won the seat. Meanwhile the world goes up in flames.

Admittedly, the local expression of that 'going up in flames' is steady rain. J. came to lunch, and we ate salade niçoise and pretended it's summer. I have spent the afternoon sorting out photographs from last month in Fife, and I have reached the wettest day of that week, when we were in Crail. Have a water feature:

Courtesy of Crail Pottery, whose courtyard display space is at its best in the rain.

( More pictures under the cut. )

We were awake at seven o'clock this morning; as we quite often are. But today, instead of letting the radio lull us back to sleep, we got up and headed out early to the Farmers' Market in Sedgefield. Usually we arrive as the market is nearly over, and we buy whatever has not yet sold out; today we had choices to make, which was strange, but good. And I remembered to take my stash of empty jars back to the lady who makes jam (she had made some gooseberry chutney this month) so I felt doubly smug.

Just a fortnight ago, on our first day in Fife, we went to Kellie Castle (we went because we wanted to, but we went that day because it was Sunday and Kellie Castle was in a minority in being open). Since our previous visit, in 2014, there have been a couple of organisational changes. Entrance to the castle was by guided tour, whereas I'm pretty sure we were permitted to wander freely, before, with volunteers in each room - some of them in period costume - to provide information and make sure we behaved ourselves. Our guide was very thorough (he told us that the tour was supposed to take 40 minutes, but somehow he always needed a full hour) which is mostly a good thing, but a discouragement from asking too many questions.

The other change is that - inevitably - they have given up on banning photography inside the castle. In celebration of which, a truly magnificent plaster ceiling:

Our guide wanted to tell us about the dogs looking down from the central painting, King Charles spaniels, in anticipation of a visit from one of the Stuart kings. I wondered what the long-necked birds were, but didn't ask...

( More photos, all exterior )

As we left Pittenweem on Saturday morning, shops and galleries were opening up for Open Studios Weekend; I was in no hurry to leave anyway, but this felt like rubbing salt in the wound. Participants displayed red balloons - or red bunting - and the effect reminded me of the poppy borders which edge the fields along the coastal route: someone must have planted them, but now they were scattering themselves along the wayside.

We followed the Forth to the western edge of Fife, to the Royal Burgh of Culross. Long ago we came here by accident, and fell in love with the Scottish National Trust's scheme for preserving little houses, and we could have spent our time happily wandering its tangle of winding streets, admiring the progress of that policy. Instead we visited the 'palace' - the house of a wealthy seventeenth century 'merchant' (actually, an industrialist, surely?) - which I don't think was open to the public when we first came to Culross. I was sorry not to have time to do both, but although the drive to our overnight stip in the borders was green and beautiful, it was also long and very hot, and I know we made the right choice.

Our hotel room had a balcony, and an hour or so there with a cup of tea and the weekend newspaper revived us enough for a stroll around the town:

The following morning we went back for a closer look at the abbey, though not as close as we'd have liked: the actual church is closed for repairs to the masonry. This threw our timing, and we were at cross-purposes for muchy of the way home.

Normal service has now been resumed: the suitcases are empty, there is a batch of laundry in the machine, and

durham_rambler is out talking to a local residents' association about planning. If I'm licky he'll remember to buy some milk on his way home. We have decided, after much consideration of all angles, not to go to either of the two funerals to which we are invited next week, and tomorrow I will write to some of the people involved to tell them so. Not tonight, though.

How did that happen? Well, by the evidence of my camera, we've been busy. We leave Pittenweem tomorrow morning, but I've made a start on the packing, so perhaps there's time for a quick summary, with a threat /
promise of more to come, as I sort through the photographs.

We spent a wet Tuesday in Crail, dodging showers and buying things (pottery ifrom the pottery, soaps for immediate use and to be enjoyed later from the pharmacy, peaches for dinner...).

On Wednesday we visited the Folk Museum in Ceres: because we had never been there before and because we were curious to see a place called Ceres (Wikipedia says the name means "place to the west" from the Gaelic Siar meaning "west", probably in relation to St Andrews). A fun museum, followed by a brief walk around the village, before we decided it was Just Too Hot, and came home to recover. Recovery aided by the arrival of

helenraven, kindly conveyed by

fjm, and we all decamped to eat fish at the Dory, Pittenweem's fanciest bistro.

Thursday was the day we had booked a boat trip to the Isle of May. The weather was kind to us, and the puffins were numerous, though not close. I took pictures, of course, but mostly by pushing my camera to and beyond the limits of its zoom.

Or you could just relax, and sit in the sunshine, and admire the birds at a distance as they sat on their rocky outcrop (yes, those tiny specks are puffins) or flew back and forth above us. "The place is infested with puffins!" said

helenraven. "Will nobody think of the sand eels?"

Today we went to Dundee to see the Tartan exhibition at the V&A. I had not realised how close we are to Dundee here, nor that the V&A has an outpost there (in a very fancy new building, opened in 2018). The exhibition was as much fun as you might think, if not more, and the permanent collection also includes a Charles Rennie Mackintosh tea room (entire, but not alas in use as a tea room) and a linoleum elephant (by Paolozzi). When we thought we had seen all we could absorb in one day, and were walking past the Discovery on the way back to the car, Dundee managed to distract us yet again, with a collection of penguin bollards.

Tomorrow we head south, but not yet home: we have booked one more overnight, in Jedburgh.

The forecast told us that today would be rainy, so we planned a visit to the Fisheries Museum in Anstruther (with simultaneous car charging); in fact it was gloriously sunny, so we took the opportunity to walk around Pittenweem. There's a street that runs along the Harbour, and there's the High Street, where there are shops and cafés, though not many of each. Mostly we took notes, for future purchases, but we did buy a newspaper, and a light-pull in the shape of a seagull. The two streets are connected by many steep and narrow wynds:

This is St Fillan's Cave, in Cove Wynd, our route up to the High Street at the start of our circuit.

By the time we were back at our starting point, I was feeling that I had had, by my current feeble standards, a good walk. The sun was not only bright, it was hot, and I was ready to do something less strenuous. We still wanted to charge the car, which we could do in Elie: why not do that, and look for lunch there? So I don't know how it came about that instead we used a charge point in (smaller, less commercial) St Monans, a place where we have failed to find refreshment in the past. It has a smokehouse with a great reputation and a restricted opening schedule. After some frustration we finally found a place on a little industrial estate (not as grim as that sounds, but not particularly scenic) which served us perfectly acceptable toasties. Then we drove arond in circles for a bit, failing to find our way to the windmill (which we suspect in any case is not open on Mondays) and having to squeeze past a Scottish Water van...

We came home via the farm shop. I have drunk water, I have drunk tea, I am feeling much better tempered. And it was a good morning, but I really don't know what happened to this afternoon.

A warning to be careful what you wish for: yesterday I complained that I couldn't find anywhere to plug my computer in; this evening I spotted a possible extension lead in the kitchen, settled down to make use of it and the internet took advantage of my attention to deliver some bad news. Family, and not immediate family, entirely expected, but sad nonetheless.

That aside, it's been a good day. Starting with the view from our bedroom window:

We spent much of the day at Kellie Castle, which we first visited in 2014, with Bears. While we were there we received a message from a friend, a former member of the pub quiz team who is nearing the end of his job at St Andrews, inviting us to tea (and scones) with him and a visiting American at his house in Cellardyke. We drove there along the coast road, via the farm shop. So all that was excellent.

So it goes.

It is midsummer week, and this year we are spending midsummer in Pittenweem. It was a pretty frantic week before we set off, what with work and builders and the end-of-term clearout meaning that the council weren't collecting recycling, and

durham_rambler deciding that the new railings looked so good he would repaint the front door ...

Never mind, we made it, we are here.

Only the thing that got overlooked in the packing was the extension lead, which is the life support system for my very elderly notebook. I am writing this sitting on the floor of the spare bedroom. Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with a better solution.