The Old Course, St Andrews

8 April 2010 16:00

We had a day out in St Andrews yesterday, making the most of a fleeting visit by that big orange thing in the sky.

I decided to take a photograph of the beginning (and end) of the Old Course. It really tickles me that there is a public pathway cutting straight across the fairway and people wander across it all the time. I suppose it must be a right of way otherwise it would have been got rid of long ago.

This place is a Mecca for golfers but it always embarasses me as I think it must be a horrible disappointment for them as the course itself is far from being a thing of beauty. It is really boring looking. I suppose if you are into golf then it is the history of the whole thing that gets to you. There is a museum of golf on the road behind the course.

I don’t play golf as I am strictly in the ‘Why ruin a good walk?’ camp, but local golfers of my acquaintance are equally unimpressed and have assured me that the best courses are around Gleneagles in Perthshire.

If you happen to live in Fife though you have plenty to choose from. Even teeny weeny villages have their own golf course.

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Categories: Local interest, Scottish History, Towns

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King Alexander lll of Scotland Monument

25 March 2010 11:05

This monument is situated at the roadside just north of Burntisland in Fife. It commemorates Alexander lll who fell off his horse and broke his neck near or at this spot.

He had been warned not to travel on such a dark and stormy night but he was a middle-aged man who was keen to get back to his new and much younger wife.

He was travelling from Edinburgh to Kinghorn and when he became separated from the other horsemen in his entourage, the accident occurred. You would think that they would have taken better care of the king.

There is a plaque by the side of the monument with an inscription in Scots lamenting his death.

I wonder if there were any conspiracy theories going around at the time. There certainly would be nowadays. His death brought on Edward I of England’s attempt to take over Scotland which led to the long set of wars to maintain Scottish independence involving William Wallace and Robert The Bruce.

The monument was erected to commemorate the 600th anniversary of Alexander’s death. As you can see it is in need of a bit of sprucing up, I think it suffers from being so close to the passing traffic.

We visited it on Sunday which was just two days after the 19th and I had expected to see a wreath there as they used to have a procession and a bit of a ceremony, but there wasn’t any sign of it. Maybe that custom has died out.

We walked to the monument from Kirkcaldy, taking the coastal path as far as Kinghorn. Then you have to go by the road to Burntisland.

It was a much longer walk than we had anticipated. We aim to walk for about an hour every day, just to keep in shape. However this took us over two and a half hours there and back, it probably works out at about 9 or 10 miles. We didn’t feel too bad considering it’s the first really long walk of the year.

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Categories: Local interest, Scottish History

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Snowdrops

8 March 2010 23:38

You wouldn’t believe from looking at this blog that gardening is my main hobby. It certainly hasn’t featured much and that is mainly because the weather has been so awful, even the so called summer didn’t make an appearance for the third year. But for the first time since before Christmas we are without a hard frost – for three days in a row – amazing. It’s beginning to feel a bit like spring but I reckon my garden is about six weeks behind where it should be.

There isn’t much sign of life except for the beautiful snowdrops which we bought ‘in the green’ from the Cambo Estate at Kingsbarns near St Andrews. I’ve planted lots of snowdrop bulbs before but they always failed to come up. Someone told me that mice eat the dry bulbs. The Cambo snowdrops are really unusual ones and they are actually multiplying in our garden, which is a great bonus.

Cambo is well worth a visit if you enjoy plants and woodland walks.

The photos in this post are from my own garden.

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Ravenscraig Castle

15 February 2010 21:33

I went to school with a girl called Rosabelle a very long time ago in the west of Scotland and I had never heard of anyone else with that name until quite recently when I came across the poem Rosabelle which was written by Sir Walter Scott.

When I read it I realised that he had written it about a local lass, the daughter of the Saint Clair (Sinclair) family who owned Ravenscraig Castle, the remains of which are situated about a mile from the esplanade in Kirkcaldy. For some reason Scott changed the name to Ravensheuch.

Ravenscraig Castle from path.

Ravenscraig Castle from beach.

It has seen better days. Unfortunately the locals have used the building as a handy place to gather stone from for whatever they wanted to build in the past. But if you find yourself in that part of Fife it is worthwhile stopping to take a look at what is left. You can park your car at Ravenscraig Park, the castle is on the edge of it.

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Categories: Scottish History

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