Aberdour Castle, Fife

Aberdour Castle, info Board 1

It was back in October when we visited nearby Aberdour Castle for the second time, it must have been about 15 years since we first went there. It’s just a ruin now but there are parts of it which are quite habitable – well almost. If you want to enlarge the photos click on them.

Aberdour Castle, Fife

Aberdour Castle, Fife

The gardens are well maintained now and they even have an orchard.

Aberdour Castle from Garden

The photo below was taken from the Doocot (Dovecote)

Aberdour Castle , from Doocot, Fife

But there are habitable rooms in the castle as you can see below. With a few rugs, tapestries and curtains I could quite happily move in!

Aberdour Castle,Fireplace ,Fife

There is a rare painted ceiling

Painted ceiling, Aberdour Castle, Fife

And a large hall which is actually bigger than these photos make it look.

Aberdour Castle, Hall, Fife

I’m sure you can hire this place for a wedding, if you are so inclined.

Abedour Castle, Hall, Fife

James Douglas, the 4th Earl of Morton acquired this castle in 1564. He loved gardens and his travelling in Europe and particularly Italy had influenced him when he set about planning his garden. Sadly it doesn’t take long for gardens to disappear once a property falls into disuse.

Morton's Garden, berdour Castle, Fife

Aberdour  Castle, info Board , Fife

 

 

 

Blackness Castle – part 2 – Fort William in Outlander

We’re back at Blackness Castle which is apparently in Clackmannanshire, the smallest county in Scotland, it’s not far from Stirling. From the photo below you can see how solid and high the towers are. The gateway that you can see is where there’s a we drawbridge that leads out to the river walkway where supplies used to be unloaded for the castle, directly from ships.

Blackness Castle , River Forth

All of the rooms in this castle seem to be barrel vaulted, no doubt for strength. I’m sure that some of the rooms were used in filming Outlander most recently.

Blackness Castle Clackmannanshire, Scotland

There are stairs all over the place as you can see below. It was an incredibly blustery day as it almost always is at the River Forth but strangely as soon as we got inside the castle it felt very safe, quiet and – warm! Some of the walls are around nine feet thick, where they were in most danger of getting attacked by cannon I suppose.

Blackness Castle, Scotland

It could feel quite cosy with tapestries on the walls and heavy curtains and maybe a nice carpet underfoot, or at least rushes. I’m not sure if the room below originally had a low ceiling in it. On the right hand and above the window it looks like the remains of a fireplace.

Blackness Castle , Scotland

As is often the way with old castles a lot of the rooms have a medieval ‘en suite’ off the main rooms as you can see in the photo below. All mod cons, well it’s a long way up and down to the ground floor. No ‘garde looing’ here! But it does look a bit cold to be dangling your ‘bahookie’ over the hole.

Blackness Castle , latrine, Scotland

Below there’s even an alcove where you can wash your hands, but I don’t think it’s within the toilet area, maybe a good thing.

Blackness Castle, Scotland

I particularly like the windows, the shutters open if you need fresh air.

And I can just imagine this as a good place to read – if there were plenty of cushions on the window seats.

Blackness Castle , Scotland

Blackness Castle  window, Scotland, Outlander

The castle has been modified a lot over the centuries and the photo below show what was the original entrance, which is now blocked up. It’s much bigger than it looks in the photo.

Blackness Castle original entrance, Scotland

The garden, below was the last bit which we visited, as you can see the weather had cleared by then. It looks quite industrial on the other side of the river, because it is. The blue crane thing to the right of the middle is actually at Rosyth, the naval dockyard. So this area of the River Forth is still about defence!

Blackness Castle garden River Forth

Blackness Castle became Fort William in Outlander, and it was where Jamie received the lashes from the dastardly Captain Randall – ooh err!

Falkland, Fife

Falkland, Pond, Fife

This year is going by in a flash and it’ll be September soon, but I’m casting my mind back to a sparkling day in March when we visited nearby Falkland. The photo above is of the lodge house at Falkland House. This used to be a favourite haunt of ours when we had wee ones in the family, before we even had our own kids to take there it was loved by our niece because at that time the pond was full of ducks and all sorts of water fowl. For some reason you never see any at all nowadays. The lodge house looks idyllic, but the water flows underneath it so that will be noisy and chilly I imagine. Below is a photo I took of crocuses but they’re dark purple so quite difficult to see.

Falkland Crocuses ,Fife

From Falkland Pond, Fife

To the left of the field above the ground slopes up to the Lomonds, I’ve never gone up that way, it looks too steep.

But walking over to the right from there you get onto a woodland path which leads eventually to Falkland Palace orchard. The wee waterfall below and the bridge are close to a popular children’s play park.

Falkland Waterfall , Fife

The view below is looking over towards the villages of Auchtermuchty and Dunshalt  from the footpath which leads to Falkland Palace orchard. Nowadays Falkland is probably best known for being used as a  location in the TV series Outlander.

Fife Hills, near Falkland, Fife

In this post that I did way back in 2016 you can see the village when the film people converted the shops to look like they were in the 1950s.

My Snowy Garden

Snowy Garden

The temperature in Fife hasn’t got above freezing for days now and we’ve had snow all week, which wouldn’t be so bad on its own but when all the ruts and footprints ice over it makes for an interesting walk for the Guardian in the morning! The garden looks quite pretty though.

Next week it’s supposed to be very mild for the time of year again, but it does mean that I should be able to get to some far-flung shops, something I really need to do.

Falkland Palace Gardens, Fife, Scotland

On the 18th of May we made a quick viisit to nearby Falkland Palace, I had wanted to see what the orchard looked like as the apple blossom in my garden was looking pretty, I thought the palace orchard would look fab, but their apple trees bloom far earlier than the ones in my garden. After realising that I vaguely remebered that I had discovered that the last time I tried to see the blossom! I must remember to visit earlier next year! Anyway, I enjoyed mooching around the other parts of the gardens, taking these photos.

Falkland Palace ,garden, shrubs

Falkland Palace gardens, Fife, Scotland

Falkland Palace Trees, Fife, Scotland

Falkland Palace Wall + Plants, Fife, Scotland

In the distance below you can see one of the Lomond hills, I’m never sure whether it’s the east or west Lomond.

Falkland, Orchard Lawn + Palace

Falkland Palace Lawn + Greenhouses

Back at the orchard there’s a huge sculpted wicker woman, she’s wearing well as she has been there for a number of years now.

Falkland Palace, Wicker Woman + Palace

I think possibly she’s meant to be Mary, Queen of Scots as she was very fond of Falkland Palace, she did a lot of hunting around the area and would have flown birds of prey.

Wicker Woman, Falkland Palace, gardens, Fife, Scotland

But the birds that I was interested in were the swallows, or maybe they’re swifts, I’m never quite sure. I wanted to see if there were many nesting in their usual place at the palace Real/Royal Tennis court. There were just a few to be seen, usually all of the nests are occupied. There are none to be seen around where we live, so that’s two bad years in a row they’ve had here. If you look carefully at the photo below you should just be able to see a teeny wee bird perched on the left of the roof support.

Swallow, Falkland Palace, Fife

Falkland Palace, Tree + Steps

The lilacs were looking particularly pretty and fresh.

Flowers , Lilacs, Falkland Palace garden, Fife, Scotland

As you can see it was a lovely sunny day. The garden was very busy and at the beginning we were having a hard time dodging other people, we’re still being very cautious which I think is sensible given that the Covid numbers are rising again in Scotland. That’s surprising given that it’s summer (supposedly) and people are outside more. It seems to be coming in three monthly waves now and just about everybody I know has had it.

Anyway, I hope to have photos on here of our Orkney trip soonish, amazingly we had great weather again, well great for Scotland, it wasn’t exactly warm but at least it wasn’t wet.

Firth of Forth at Aberdour

I had been looking forward to the 19th of February for at least a month, or whenever I realised that the big Edinburgh antiques fair at Ingliston was scheduled for that weekend, it would be the fisrt fair since befpre the beginning of Covid, I was desperate to have a good old rake around after more than two years of staying home. Sadly it wasn’t to be as on Friday night as I was tootling around on the internet I decided just to check up and make sure the fair was still on – of course it was CANCELLED! I was/am so disappointed. There was no explanation at all but possibly it was the horrendous weather forecast which led to the cancellation, although in the Edinburgh area it was just the possibility of some rain or snow that was expected. As it happens we’ve had a very placid weekend weather wise for once as Storm Eunice hit mainly southern England and Wales.

Anyway, we decided to drive to a rake around a ‘collectables’ place at Inverkeithing, which had nothing worth buying and then drove on along the coast to Aberdour, some ten miles or so from us.

Aberdour Harbour

Headland at Aberdour

We couldn’t take the usual circular walk that we normally do as the wooden footbridge that we have to go over had been washed away. So when we got down to the beach we just had to turn around and go back the way we had come, but not before I took a few photos looking out over the Firth of Forth, the first one from the wee harbour and the others looking over to Edinburgh.

Edinburgh and Firth of Forth From Aberdour

As you can see it was a sparkling day! There’s another antiques fair scheduled for May, fingers crossed that one goes ahead.

Balbirnie autumn walk part 2

I took a lot of photos on my autumnal Balbirnie walk a couple of weeks ago. I thought you might be interested to see some more of the area – so here they are.

autumnal trees, Balbirnie, Fife

tree, moss, Balbirnie, Fife

autumnal Trees, Balbirnie, Fife

The allotments are sheltered by a tall wall and backed by a lovely band of trees as you can see.

Balbirnie allotments gates, trees, Fife

So far the weather has been so mild, the birds just aren’t interested in eating the berries, so we get to enjoy them longer.

Berries, Balbirnie, Fife

Balbirnie Trees, burn, Fife

Balbirnie, Burn, Fife, trees

Balbirnie Burn, Fife, trees

How do you feel about leaf-blowers? At this time of the year they’re in use regularly around the grounds of the local big hotel which is near this woodland. Those ear-splitting contraptions must be just about the most useless tools ever invented, especially when the leaves are just blasted off the grass and left at the edge. One gust of wind and they’re all back on the grass again, and the really annoying thing is that about four strokes with a garden rake would do the job faster and silently, and obviously they should be gathered up into a wheelbarrow to make leaf-mould. With the man actually in control of the leaf-blower wearing ear defenders, the rest of us just have to put up with the racket! Yes I feel grumpy!

Autumnal walk in Balbirnie

A couple of days ago I was walking under a maple tree when a teeny wee gust of wind appeared, for all of two seconds, and it seemed like about two hundred leaves fluttered around me and to the ground. I realised that it wouldn’t be long before all the autumn colour was gone and the trees would be bare. So it was lucky that a week earlier I had taken some photos on my phone, while taking some much-needed exercise.

acer , Balbirnie trees, Fife

autumn leaves , Balbirnie, Fife,trees

As you can see from the shadows it was a lovely sunny day, perfect for catching the autumnal shades.

autumn leaves, Balbirnie, Fife, trees

autumnal Tree, Balbirnie, Fife,

As ever, click on the photos if you want to see them enlarged.

autumnal Trees, Balbirnie, Fife

Normally at this time of the year the air is full of those I think attractive, dampish leafmould/fungi scents, but our unusually mild weather seems to have kept them away for the moment – more global warming probably. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed stretching your legs with me!

autumnal trees, Balbirnie, Fife

Kirkcaldy’s Heritage in Fifty Objects

This blogpost is very parochial, being about the history and heritage of Kirkcaldy in Fife, a nearby town.

To mark the 50th birthday of Kirkcaldy’s Civic Society they have decided to choose 50 objects that relate to the town and its history/heritage, hoping to stimulate memories in readers which might lead to more information being gathered, information which might otherwise have been lost. You can see some of the ‘objects’ here, so far only 16 have been written about, but I know that the Spanish Civil War memorial just off Forth Avenue will be featuring in the list at some point in the future. That memorial has been on my mind somewhat recently as I’ve just finished reading Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit and obviously George Orwell was influenced by his experiences in that war. You can read Jack’s old blogpost about the memorial here.

I only have a few Kirkcaldy objects in my own varied collection of ‘stuff’. Actually I have quite a few old postcards of Beveridge Park, some of which you can see here. Below is another one which sadly is postally unused, but is of interest to me anyway because of the clothes.

Waiting for the Boats in Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy

The Mauchline money box below has an image of St Brycedale Free Church, Kirkcaldy. This church is still in use but is now called St Bryce Kirk. In the past the politician Gordon Brown’s father was the minister of this church.

Mauchline Ware Box, Kirkcaldy Subject