Falkland Palace Garden, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 19 September 2020 by Katrina

Although we’re members of the Scottish National Trust we haven’t been able to visit any of their properties this year as they’ve obviously all been closed due to Covid. Some of the bigger castles have opened up again, such as Edinburgh Castle and Stirling Castle, but last week we decided as it was a beautiful day we’d visit nearby Falkland Palace, just to walk in the garden, the palace wasn’t open. You can just walk in and there’s a box for donations.

Falkland Palace was the hunting lodge of the Stuart kings and queens. Built in the 16th century by King James IV and his son James V and modelled in the French style it was also a favourite with Mary, Queen of Scots as it reminded her of the French chateaux of her childhood.

Much of the palace is a romantic ruin, but in the 19th century the third Marquess of Bute had it partly rebuilt.

We quite often just go for a wander around the gardens, there’s a pleasant orchard, although a lot of the trees have been fairly recently planted. In normal times you can have a nice wee sit down on a bench and admire the views, but I believe they’ve been removed due to Covid 19.

Anyway, here are some of the photos I took while we wandered around.

The gate below is obviously modern, it leads through to the orchard some of which you can just see in the background. The apple crop was not nearly as good as usual due to the weather.

Although Falkland has always been popular with tourists it has become even more so in recent years as the village and palace have been used as a location for Outlander. Click on the photos if you want to see them enlarged.

The Turning Tide by Catriona McPherson

Posted on 18 September 2020 by Katrina

The Turning Tide by Catriona McPherson was published in 2019, I’m glad that I’ve caught up with this series which should be read in the correct order if possible. Dandy’s family has just expanded by two as her daughter-in-law has given birth to twins.

The setting is the summer of 1936 and on the east coast of Scotland Dandy is feeling no need to shed her cardigan as there’s a keen wind, as usual! Dandy and Alec have been asked to investigate goings on at the Cramond Ferry. It doesn’t sound like their sort of thing and initially they decline to take the case on, then refuse the second plea, when the third request came along things at Cramond had deteriorated and they decided to take the case on. Apparently the ferrywoman’s behaviour was now so strange that she was refusing to ferry anyone out to the small tidal island in the middle of the Firth of Forth. There has been a tragic accident, the body of a young man has been fished out of the river and Dandy realises that she knows his family. When Dandy and Alec arrive at Cramond island the ferrywoman who goes by the name of Vesper Kemp is raving, filthy and is naked from the waist up. Alec doesn’t know where to look! Vesper claims she murdered the young man.

Various Cramond residents including the local minister don’t believe that Vesper is guilty, surely it was just an accident, but there’s no doubting that there are strange things going on in the small community. Dandy and Alec are the ones to get to the bottom of it all, assisted by Grant, Dandy’s maid who now sees herself as a key component of any investigation.

This was a good read and for me the fact that I know the settings of Cramond and Edinburgh so well added to the enjoyment. You can see images of Cramond here. However the tidal island off Cramond whih is featured in this book sounds much bigger than the actual island.

Culross, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 3 September 2020 by Katrina

Culross

A lot of the wee houses in Culross are owned by the Scottish National Trust and were delapidated and uninhabited until they took them over and renovated them.

Then they rented them out to people, I’m not sure if the houses that I’ve photographed are some of those ones but I think they are. I wish they had kept one of them as a tourist attraction, it’s lovely to visit palaces and stately homes but it can be even more interesting to see how the ordinary people lived back in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It’s strange but looking back I remembered having a hard time picking my way over the stones and boulders that made up the roads but I now see that some of them were tarmacked. In the photo below you can get an idea of how rough some of the roads are. It looks like a great tower house and must have a lovely view over the River Forth.

It’s a pity about the wheelie bins in the photo below – ugly but necessary for the people who live there. Sometimes tourists forget that these are people’s homes and have a good old look through a window, nose pressed to glass. I know someone who did that thinking the house was a museum and got the shock of their life when she saw the woman of the house staring back – it wisnae me!

The merkat cross below is about halfway up the very steep hill that leads to Culross Abbey, it seems a strange place to hold a market, it can’t have been an easy haul up there for any stall holders or shoppers. Maybe they held the market elsewhere despite the merkat cross being here.

On the way back downhill it’s easiest either to walk down the gutter at the side or along the middle of the road where the boulders are bigger and flatter.

Below is a photo that I took close to the top of the hill that leads up to the abbey, looking over to the Firth of Forth. I inadvertently got a cow’s backside in view too!

The beach isn’t the bonniest but apparently it’s very rich in food for seabirds which is the main thing. Culross is definitely worth a visit if you are in or close to Fife.

Culross Abbey, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 1 September 2020 by Katrina

Last Friday dawned dry and bright, the only dry day in the week, so we decided to drive to the very historic Fife village of Culross, which is pronounced Cooris. Although we’ve visited Culross Palace at least three times we had never tackled the very steep and stony road which leads to the Culross Abbey. It is now a ruin and a lot of the stones from it have been ‘robbed’ to build the nearby manse.

The tower of the abbey church which is in use today stands in what was the middle of the original abbey. It was founded in 1217 by Malcolm, 3rd Earl of Fife. It was home to Cistercian monks who wore white habits.

The metal stairs are very steep, I went down backwards.

And parts of the original abbey can be seen in the manse garden. What a wonderful feature to have in your garden!

The ‘modern’ Abbey Church is still in use, it’s a shame it was closed when we were there, it looks like it would be very interesting internally. I did have a good old mooch around the graveyard though.

I know it isn’t everyone’s idea of a good afternoon out but it hit the spot for me!

If you don’t mind walking up a very steep hill on at times a painfully uneven surface this is an interesting place to visit, as much for the lovely wee houses on the way up as for the grand but ruined abbey. A lot of the houses in the village are now owned and rented out by the Scottish National Trust, they were ruins before they took them over and refurbished them, but I’ll keep the photos of the houses for another blogpost.

You can see more images of the abbey here.

Kinnoull Hill, Perthshire, Scotland

Posted on 26 August 2020 by Katrina

Last Thursday was a beautiful day, such a treat after the twelve hour long thunder and lightning storm of a few days previously, so we grabbed the day and drove to Kinnoull Hill in Perthshire. For decades we’ve driven past the rocky outcrop which towers above the M 90 motorway that takes you into the city of Perth and had just never got around to actually visiting the place, despite it being a really popular beauty spot.

The hill is covered with trees and the path is fairly steep but it only took us about 15 minutes to reach the top, we really needed the exercise anyway after being cooped up in the house hiding from the torrential rain of earlier in the week.

There’s a wood carving of an owl in flight on the way up, but the woodland itself was bereft of birdlife. I’ve often been puzzled by this when walking in woods. Even when there’s nobody else around and it’s very quiet the woods never seem to have any wildlife in them. There are far more birds around my garden.

Through a gap in the trees you can get quite a decent view of the historic village of Scone which is close to Perth.

From the top of Kinnoull Hill you get a great view east to the Carse of Gowrie and over to Errol, even on what was a fairly hazy day. You can see why the River Tay is called the silvery Tay. Over the river are the hills of Fife.

The photo below is a stitch of three photos that I took looking over to the south side of the river and Fife beyond. The yellowy-gold coloured fields had just been harvested.

The stitch below is from the top of what was a very blustery Kinnoull Hill, looking down towards the bend in the River Tay. It felt quite dangerous, in fact there are plenty of warning signs to tell you not to go too close to the edge as it just falls away and it would be easy to walk over by accident.

The one below is looking northwards towards Dunkeld and Birnam Wood of Macbeth fame.

Below is an information plaque which tells of all the instances of historical interest around this area.

After we walked back down the hill we had another look at the information board at the car park and realised that we had somehow missed a tower which has been built on the hill, so one day we’ll have to go back again and take a close look at it. Obviously we missed a path which leads over to that side of the hill. You can see images of it here.

We should have done our homework before setting out, such as visiting this Visit Scotland site.

The Gleam in the North by D.K. Broster

Posted on 22 August 2020 by Katrina

The Gleam in the North by D.K. Broster is the second book in Broster’s Jacobite trilogy which begins with The Flight of the Heron. It was first published in 1927.

The story begins with Ewan Cameron’s two small boys playing by the edge of the loch that they’ve been warned not to go near. Donald the eldest is enthusiastically telling Keithie his young brother about the battle of Culloden and he shows Keithie his favourite possession – an old claymore (sword) which had been used at the battle. But Keithie is most unimpressed and throws the claymore into the loch, which prompts Donald to push his young brother into the loch after it – and it’s a very deep loch.

Keithie is rescued but the cold soaking leads to him falling seriously ill and his father’s search for help in the moors and hills of the Scottish Highlands which are being patrolled by King George’s Redcoats alerts the authorities. They’re looking for ‘rebels’ such as Ewen so that they can take them down to England to execute them.

It isn’t only the Redcoats that the Jacobites have to beware of though, there are some spies within the clans, selling their own for a handful of coins, much less than 40 pieces of silver.

This was not quite as enjoyable as The Flight of the Heron but was still a good read full of suspense and is a painless way of reading about Scottish history if you’re interested in it. Ewen inadvertently meets up with his old friend Keith Windham’s family which goes a long way to explaining Windham’s personality.

It was a time when the Highlanders were being violently suppressed, forbidden to speak Gaelic, wear the tartan or be in possession of anything resembling a weapon, and they were being transported to the colonies at the drop of a hat.

SEE SCOTLAND BY TRAIN – National Museums of Scotland

Posted on 8 August 2020 by Katrina

SEE SCOTLAND BY TRAIN is a slim paperback book (60 pages) produced by National Museums of Scotland and if you like those vintage railway posters that seem to have had their heyday back in the 1930s then you’ll enjoy the many images that appear in it.

Not that the posters all date from the 30s, they span many decades and some of the posters featured in this book date from 2006.

The Dunoon poster is a reminder of ‘home’ because as the crow flies it’s not far from where I grew up. By the way – when I was speaking to a young woman recently I used the phrase ‘as the crow flies’ and she had no idea what I meant!

The Glenfinnan poster is of the viaduct which is used in the Harry Potter films, it’s a very scenic area but you don’t really get the sense of that in the films.

The Waverley Station (Edinburgh) poster is very modern, stylish and fairly recent. It’s the sort of art that you have to squint at but if you know the station you will recognise elements of the building. I like it anyway.

If like me you like British Rail travel posters you can see many more of them here. Sadly those ones don’t appear in this small book.

The Glasgow Electric poster below is a real nostalgia trip to me as the ‘blue train’ as everybody called them was the kind of train that I used to go up and down to Glasgow frequently. I remember when I moved from the west of Scotland to the south-east of England I was shocked to discover that the trains I had to use there dated from the 1930s.

Blue Train

St Andrews, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 5 August 2020 by Katrina

St Andrews in Fife is one of my favourite places to visit, but because of the lockdown we hadn’t been there for months, actually possibly we hadn’t been there at all this year. So on Saturday we took the opportunity to pay the town a visit. It was a bit daft doing it on a Saturday as it was bound to be busy but we were visiting family further along the coast so we killed two birds with one stone.

It looks a bit grey and cool but it was really quite a hot day, by Scottish standards. The queue for the ice cream shop was too long for us to stand in. The beach was packed, but we just sat on a bench (wearing our masks) and didn’t bother going on to the sands, we just people and dog watched, the dogs were more entertaining, chasing the waves.

It was strange to see the gates around the cathedral closeed and padlocked, I had to tale photos through the railings.

The archway below is over the road that leads down to the beach, down a steep road. If you want to read a bit more about the town then have a look here, there are some great photos.

If you are looking for tips on what to do around St Andrews have a look at My Voyage Scotland here.

Red sky at night – in Fife, Scotland

Posted on 28 July 2020 by Katrina

We’ve had some terrible weather this July, torrential rain lasting for ages, but we have also had some wonderful sunsets and cloud formations during our long summer gloamings.

I knew that we would have to pay for all that glorious weather we had in May – in the shape of poor June and July weather. I hope things become more settled in August, it probably will be better just as the schools begin to go back (however they’ve decided to do it) because that’s normally what happens, not that there’s anything normal about 2020.

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 2

Posted on 10 July 2020 by Katrina

Here we are back at Branklyn Garden in Perth again, it was the first day of its opening again after the Covid-19 lockdown was being slowly eased in Scotland. We were all glad to see some different scenery I’m sure.

There were quite a lot of people there but it was still fairly easy to lose yourself among the plants and take photos without other people being in the background.

Sadly I couldn’t see any fish in the pond, I suspect that if they put any in there they would be fodder for some kind of birds, possibly a heron. This garden is a short distance from the River Tay, where there are plenty of seabirds around.

I wish I could remember the name of the red flowered climber below, I have a feeling that it’s an annual but I can’t find any images of one like it. That’s one grouse I have about Branklyn, the plants aren’t always labelled. Probably they were all well labelled originally but the plants have engulfed them as they grew.

You can just get a glimpse of the house that the original owners of the garden lived in in the photo below. This is now a Scottish National Trust property but the house is used as a holiday rental so you can’t look around it.

There are some cracking acers/Japanese Maples in this garden. So many people love them but aren’t able to grow them although they’re not that pernickety really, having said that some of mine got damaged by an air frost in May, just as the new growth was looking so good.

It was a sunny day and the sun shining through the top of the acer below was quite something, but the photo doesn’t really capture the moment.

Pining for the West

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Category Archives: Scotland