Well that’s the school holidays over with in the east of Scotland anyway. We didn’t go away this summer, our lives are sort of on hold at the moment as our house is up for sale now and we can’t really think beyond moving on to the next place, wherever and whenever that might be.
But a few days ago we did drive along the coast a few miles to Burntisland. This town was at one time a popular holiday destination, especially for people from the west of Scotland who fancied a wee change and a breath of eastern air.
The railway station above is quite different from most others in small towns in Scotland, as you can see it was built along quite grand lines and in a classical style.
Sadly these towns have all fallen on hard times in recent years as people preferred to fly to Spain to chase the sunshine, and all the boarding houses, small hotels and B&Bs have disappeared and the town itself is down at heel, mind you the same thing can be said of most high streets at the moment.
This photo was taken close to the swimming pool, it’s of a popular beach with part of the town in the background. The town itself is quite historical, you can read about it here.
The photo above was taken from the same spot that I took the previous one, just looking in the opposite direction out onto the Firth of Forth with one of the islands in the background.
Another place that we visited last week was the teeny wee village of Tyninghame in East Lothian, we had lunch in the coffee shop there and couldn’t believe how busy it was. We were visiting friends from England who have settled there, it’s a lovely wee place but I imagine it’s different altogether in the winter time. Tyninghame is one of those wee villages which was moved in the 18th century by its owner. The Earl of Haddington apparently didn’t like the view of the village houses which he got from from his own stately home, so he had the offending buildings moved further away!
If you’re at all interested in Scotland you will find the Undiscovered Scotland site very interesting. It seems to have information on bucketloads of places in Scotland that I haven’t even heard of. I could spend an awful long time on that site alone.
To have the power to not liking where buildings were and to simply move them – could not get away with that today, planning regulations, human rights, health and safety – I can imagine.
Strange to think the school holidays are over up there when there is at least 3 weeks left down in Hampshire.
Jo,
The Earl of Haddington apparently still owns the whole place, the houses all being rented out, so practice forelock tugging required I think by the tenants! I suspect he can still do what he wants.
The summer holidays always seem to pass so quickly, they are 6 weeks long though and some people want to make them shorter, mainly because parents don’t want to pay for childcare I think.
I love the old stone on the railway station and on many of the other buildings it seems from the website! Is this town in the running for home?
Peggy Ann,
No we won’t be moving to Burntisland, it’s just a few miles along the coast and we did think of living there years ago – then thought again.