Well, what can I say? There’s not a lot in Dalmeny really, so I hope it isn’t a disappointment to you. I must admit that it appealled to me though. We passed this field on the road up to the village from South Queensferry. It’s not a bad view I think, considering the time of the year.

Then when you get to the top of the road the war memorial is just about the first thing you see. The village houses are all very similar, they look like they were originally built for farm workers. The village is so quiet that it’s amazing to think that it’s just a hop and a skip from Edinburgh.

I was chuffed to see that there is a large and very old church in the village. I’ve said it before – that I must stop taking photos of churches – after all I’m not in the least bit religious, but I do love mooching around old graveyards, and I just can’t break myself of the habit of photographing them. It’s very obvious that this church, called Dalmeny Kirk, has had a lot of restoration work done on the tower. In fact we thought it had been done recently but apparently it was restored in 1937.

It’s a big church and I couldn’t get a stitch of it, but as you can see, it’s obviously a very old building in fact I was gobsmacked when I got home and googled it, because this is the oldest Norman church in Scotland and is over 1,000 years old!! Obviously that makes it pre-Reformation, you can tell by the design anyway that it wasn’t built as a Presbyterian church. It’s much too ornate and curvaceous for that.

In fact, in its original guise as a Roman Catholic church it was known as Saint Cuthbert’s. It seems to be well used nowadays as they have musical events there from time to time. As there really isn’t anything else in the village I suppose it is the focal point of the community, which is just as it was always meant to be.

The graveyard is quite large and has some very old gravestones in it but a lot of them are so worn that it’s difficult to read them. I liked this one just because it’s so Victorian. It commemorates a sea captain and his wife.

And that’s Dalmeny, because we didn’t get the length of the other road which leads to the railway station. I think there are some more modern houses there, and for all I know there might even be a pub, otherwise the inhabitants will just have to go down to South Queensferry if they want to do some shopping, or drinking, there are plenty of pubs and hotels there.

To read more about the church and see some photos of its interior have a look here.