Fife Coastal Path Day 2

There's something great about camping. Being woken up by birdsong, around 5am as the light streams. You open the tent flap, your eyes adjusting to the change in colour, full of hope that the sky is blue.

Day 2 was such a day. Perfectly cloudless skies from the start. We felt fine - our worst fear after a day's long walking and a night under canvas, but all was well.

The best feeling was packing up all our belongings into two not-very-big rucksacks and just walking off the site without a care.

Largo was as nice in the morning as the day before. We feasted on croissants and ham over looking the rocks.

Nearby there was a strange statue overlooking the bay.

As well as one of the real Robinson Crusoe

Soon the village was behind us,

and an amazing bay lay ahead

Ok so the picture doesn't do justice. But it was like 9am, the beach was 2 miles of pure sand, it was low tide, and the place was utterly deserted. It was heaven walking across the beach in the sunshine.
Largo - we will come back!

Got too carried away - we missed the path and had to ford a stream to get back on track!

We then passed a caravan park (really not a fan of these huge static sites - no pictures there), and headed for the highlight of the day - the Elie chain walk.

Elie Chain Walk - well it's described below:

We'd heard about it, and were determined to give it a go. The tide and weather were on our side.

It's around your typical UK rocky headland.

and it looks a bit like this.

Some chains are horizontal where you go along a ledge, others are vertical - both up and down. Fortunately there are some good footholds along the way so there is no need to be a climber to complete the walk, just dress sensibly and take your time. Also anyone much shorter than 5' may struggle with leg length (speaking from personal experience).

Here's me doing a ledge section:

And Mr G doing a descent.





Cool cliffs on the way round.

Us at the finishing line :)



Well, we made it, with a few hair raising moments (wouldn't fancy it if the rocks/chains were slippery), and turns out, being loaded down with backpacks was not the best idea.

But we made it!

High on success (and exhaustion) we literally crawled to the next town: Elie.

We headed straight to an amazing pub: The Ship. It overlooks the beach, the beer garden pretty much is the beach. Great stop in summer - does BBQs, cricket matches, Pimms - thoroughly British!

They do two sizes of fish & chips. After the morning's efforts even I had to super-size!

Here is the view from the pub

Well a couple of hours later we somehow pulled ourselves together and stumbled on.

St Monan's was our goal tonight!

We considered wild camping by this castle:

But hot showers persuaded us to move onto the campsite in the village.

Here are a few pics of the village. It apparently has the closest church to the sea in the UK! Plus it has a windmill! Another stunning town.

This was used for salt production as part of an industry lasting hundreds of years.

That night we feasted on salmon pate and oatcakes under a shady tree!

Fife Coastal Path Day 1

So we're back from our walking adventure, and over the next few days I'll be blogging about our travels along the Coastal Path.

With a short amount of time, we decided to pick the best section of the route: Kirkcaldy to St Andrews. Also this helped our plan of using public transport as we could get to both locations.

So the holiday started in a rather uninspiring location - Glenrothes bus station. The skies were grey, but looked set to clear.

Arriving in Kirkcaldy the weather was no better - North Sea fog covered the beach!

Fortunately the route was well signposted. So we were off.

Kirkcaldy is not very exciting so we quickly left the town behind. We didn't stop at the castle as we wanted to get moving and the visibility was poor.

Hugging the shoreline we followed the old boundary wall of Dysart House.

This then lead through a tunnel and out into Dysart harbour.

The blue sky was just beginning to break through.
Dysart is a pretty harbour now but has had a busy industrial past.

Leaving Dysart we passed clear signs of this heritage

Soon the coastal villages came thick and fast. Next up was Wemyss. Wemyss has undergone recent restoration. The village is now pristine.

We stopped here for a spot of lunch.

Wemyss is also known for the caves outside town.

Then the lowlight of the walk - the towns of Buckhaven and Methil. These are still industrial towns, whose fortunes were down to local coal mining. Now they are using the old docks for offshore renewable energies.

We sped on to our final point for the night: Lower Largo.

The village beckoned.

Lower Largo is a very pretty place. We had a meal at the Crusoe Hotel, a pint at the Railway Inn, then up the hill to our campsite for the night.

To be continued...........

Night of the museum

Last weekend was 2012's Museums at Night event.

I was lucky enough to find myself in London on Friday night with time to myself, so I headed to the V&A museum (open til 10pm every Friday!)

I've become a big fan of art museums since they became free a few years back. I don't know much about art, but enjoy just being able to 'dip in' for an hour or two.

Here were some of the things which caught my eye:

V&A is about design art rather than the 'painting' sort, and as you can see, it covers every corner of the globe.

After a nice little stroll I then treated myself to a pancake at the local creperie in South Kensington.

This one was a Buckwheat Tartiflette (that's bacon and cream).

Nom!

A different type of holiday

So at the end of May we're having a holiday with a difference. We're walking around the Fife Coast path. It starts at the Forth Bridge and up to St. Andrews and beyond.

The Rules are as follows:
- We'll be getting to the start by bus, and coming home by bus
- We're camping all the way, carrying our kit on our backs.
- At least one night we'll try wild camping.

 Here is our tent. We put it up last week to air it:

Fife is a very pretty part of Scotland with lots of nice coastal villages like this:

Along the way we hope to eat lots of good fish & chips, which this area is famous for.
I only have a small backpack. I must try not to take too much.

I hope also to have room for homemade granola bars and parkin cake (a Northern English speciality) to sustain us as we go.