Tag Archives: Burntisland

Burntisland, Fife and Tyninghame in East Lothian

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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.
Burntisland Railway Station
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.

Burntisland beach

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.

Firth of Forth

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.

King Alexander lll of Scotland Monument

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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.

New Year 2010

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Well it turned out to be just about the quietest Hogmanay that we have ever had. For the first time since we had kids we ended up spending it on our own. Usually our house is full of young people as our boys have always had their friends spending the time here and we come down to a lot of half dead bodies in the morning, which has a charm all of its own.

This year however, as they have both finished university and found good jobs, one has his own place with his girlfriend and the other is planning to move out very soon, they were both doing their own things, very strange.

We had a bit of a drink together and after a short time decided just to go to bed as the pavements are still too dangerous for gallivanting about on even in the daylight, very icy.

We were all strung out along the east coast of Scotland from Dundee to Burntisland. From Burntisland beach you can see the firework display which they have on Edinburgh Castle battlements. At midnight all the ships in the Firth of Forth hooted their horns. Everyone ended up back at home base in Kirkcaldy for the New Year meal. I know that as the cook I shouldn’t boast but I must admit that it was a great leg of lamb.

The cooking reminded me that in my family home it was the tradition to have a huge meal on Hogmanay. Whilst I was doing all the house cleaning, my mum was busy cooking an enormous steak pie with all the trimmings which was ready to be served around about 10.30/11.00 at night on Hogmanay. The idea was that if the men got a big stodgy meal inside them, then they wouldn’t get so drunk after midnight – they needed something to line their stomachs.

Notice that I said ‘the men’, because when I was a youngster very few women drank alcohol. A very small sherry would be the most that any of them would have. I can’t help thinking that things would be much better if we went back to that way of behaving. I’ve seen some terrible mother role models for young girls recently. Why would any woman want their children to see them paralytically sozzled? Mind you, it isn’t any better if fathers end up like that too.

Well that’s me got my first blog moan of the year over with and my last post about this new year.