My next stop in St. Andrews is the town’s eponymous and spectacularly ruined cathedral and priory. Like St. Andrews Castle it is a place I have not been for decades, but in this case not for want of trying. It always seemed to be closed when I was in town, either because the cathedral / …
I never need an excuse to visit St. Andrews, the utterly charming university town on the east coast of Fife, but this particular visit was prompted by a book I have just finished reading, The Castilians by VEH Masters. This novel follows the fortunes of the fictional Seton family caught up in the Scottish Reformation …
Like John O’Groats and Culross, St. Monans in the East Neuk of Fife is another village that gets a brown sign all to itself. Annie and I spotted it as we drove along the A917, and underneath it had further brown signs for individual attractions such as St. Monans Church, St. Monans Windmill, and the …
Balmerino Abbey was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1229 (or perhaps 1227) by Ermengarde de Beaumont (c. 1170 – 1233 or 1234), wife of William the Lion. Just as the date of the abbey’s founding isn’t 100% clear, neither is Ermengarde’s precise title. Several online sources describe her as a queen of Alba, others a …
I wrote about Jim Clark when I visited the Motorsport Museum in Duns that bears his name, although admittedly this was back when my entries were considerably shorter; this entry is really just an addendum to that previous one. Although most associated with Duns and nearby Chirnside Clark was born and spent the first six …
My recent entries were on a series of caves – St. Fillan’s Cave, Constantine’s Cave and the Caves of Caiplie – but what brought to Fife was Dunino Den, a place that I hadn’t heard of but which had been popping up regularly on my Facebook feed over the past few months. It certainly looked …
Typical. You wait six months for a cave and then three come along at once. I wrote about St. Fillan’s Cave in my last entry, but on the same day I also visited the Caves of Caiplie and Constantine’s Cave. To be honest I actually stopped at St. Fillan’s Cave last, but I wrote about …
St. Fillan (c.695 to c.770) was an Irish-born missionary whose vocation to convert the Picts to Christianity took him to Fife in Scotland. His stomping ground ranged from Aberdour on the banks of the Forth (the church behind Aberdour Castle is named for him) to Wormit and Newport-on-Tay on the River Tay, and one of …
I have been unusually lax in posting due to a paid writing gig involving a fair bit of research and a tight deadline (an article about Humble Pie for Shindig! magazine, due to appear in the December 2025 issue), so apologies for that. I had hoped to squeeze in a visit to Callendar House over …
Aberdour Castle is a complex of buildings built between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries in the village of Aberdour on the north coast of the Forth River. The original castle is said to be one of the oldest in Scotland, although that and many later extensions are now in a state of complete ruin, with …
