St Monans to Kingsbarns
St Monans is a delightful village built around and above its tiny harbour. Some of the older houses have inscribed stones that commemorate their restoration within the last three decades. I saw few people, but on the bowling green were players from puberty to pension age. I thought that was splendid. It shows how life can be when you’re a long way from the night clubs!
Approaching St Monans
Outside the town the seawater swimming pool has been abandoned – as is common along this coast – but derelict salt pans have been transformed imaginatively into a picnic area under the shadow of the restored windmill. I walked on with warm feelings for St Monans.
“…derelict salt pans have been transformed imaginatively into a
picnic area…”
In no time I was through Pittenweem, where fishing boats were receiving a wash and brush up. At Anstruther I sat in the sun with a cup of coffee and wrote postcards. It’s the largest of the East Neuk fishing villages, and its history is documented on information panels. There’s also the Scottish Fisheries Museum, and it’s for attractions of that kind that I’ll revisit the area and sniff out some of the local secrets.
Anstruther
Three miles further on lay Crail, to me the prettiest village of all, but before that came the Caiplie Caves, a reminder that, in the geologically recent past, sea level and the land have risen and fallen relative to each other as the last Ice Age came and went. Scotland is a happy hunting ground for a geomorphologist.
Caiplie Caves, formed when the land was lower in relation to the
sea
Crail
In Crail I stored my rucksack at a B&B then walked to Fife Ness where the Path follows the coast west into the Firth of Tay. Snow-capped hills rose to the north.
Looking northwest from Fife Ness, the eastern limit of my walk
Golf dominates the next few miles as the path heads towards St Andrews. Here and there the manicured grass pushes the path onto the beach, but the tide was low and I wasn’t inconvenienced. My target was Kingsbarns, where I had to wait half an hour for the bus to Crail, so I called at the pub for a couple of pints of Belhaven. The man on my left counselled me on the superb quality of McEwan’s 70/- ale. He then said it was just like Watney’s Draught Red Barrel, which was the only English beer he’d ever been able to stomach. Hmmmm….