The most notable thing I've done recently has been to walk along the coast from Aberdour to Kinghorn.

I took the train to Aberdour, very few passengers, all wearing masks.  Being not so very far from Kirkcaldy, Aberdour and its beaches is a place I was quite familiar with in my childhood.  The steep hill as you enter the town from the east provided thrills for the young cyclist but was the very devil to get up.  If I ever got up it without unmounting and pushing I'd surely remember it to this day.  So I guess I never did.

As an adult my visits have been much more infrequent.  I went climbing on the cliffs with a Stockbridge neighbour once and have a photo to prove it, if I could only lay my hands on it and I've taken the kids to the Silver Sands and the photographic proof is likewise somewhere unknown.

But this visit is documented in pictures.  First there's the castle, closed because of Covid.

It's been there a long time.  According to Historic Scotland its origins may date back 900 years.

This obelisk is more recent.

I noticed it in the distance as I walked down to the beach, too much of a detour for me to bother trying to get to it but thanks to my camera's zoom I got a picture.  I assumed it was built to commerate something or someone but when I researched it I found that it's purpose was to be spotted from afar.  From much further afar than from where I had spotted it.  From the other side of the Forth in fact.  It was apparently built by the Earl of Morton in 1744/45 to be viewed from his estate at Dalmahoy.  A handy landmark for today's Dalmahoy golfers to line up their shots.

So much of interest before I even got to the beach from where I possibly saw Dalmahoy, but without being that precise there is much to be seen over the Forth.

I got down on my knees to take this one.

Getting up again reminded me again of cycling up that brae out of Aberdour.

Then I set off along the track that runs between the railway and the Forth from where I took lots of shots of Edinburgh which I combined to make this panorama.  Click on it for a bigger image.

 

The British Aluminium plant that used to guard the western approaches to Burntisland closed down in 2002.  The husband of one of my cousins worked there and then turned his hand to psychiatric nursing when it closed.  On the main site there is now a very pleasant looking housing development.  The path from Aberdour runs parallel separated from it by a stream the banks of which have been sympathetically landscaped.

There were plans to develop the area on the seaward side of the path for leisure activities but I couldn't tell if any of that has been done. The "red pond", a deposit of sludge that is produced as a byproduct of converting bauxite to alumina is still there.  Maybe too toxic to do anything with?  There's a castle over there too.  It was on the market two years ago for £500K.  Might still be.

When I was a youngster Kirkcaldy's outdoor swimming pool was derelict and the indoor pool they have now hadn't been built so going to Burntisland's pool was a popular excursion.  It seems still to be there by the western end of the links but I didn't check its facilities.

At the entrance to the links there's a plaque showing people of note who were either born or lived in the town. No great surprise to see Thomas Chalmers, founder of the Free Church of Scotland or William Dick of the Dick Veterinary College or Henry Farnie who wrote the world's first golf instruction manual or even Mary Somerville the mathematician but there were a couple of surprises.  Robert Pitcairn was lost at sea when he was 17 but he must have been a popular lad since they named the island after him and David Danskin, founder and first captain of Arsenal FC.  My favourite though is probably Alexander Orrock who ran the Scottish mint in the 16th century and introduced the bawbee, the name derived from the name of his estate.   A more modern name is Anneila Sargent professor of astronomy in California.  She clearly profited from her time at Kirkcaldy High School.

It doesn't commemorate anyone connected to the world's first roll on roll off train ferry which ran from Burntisland to Granton from 1850 until the Forth Rail Bridge was built, presumably because no-one from the town was particularly instrumental in the project.  Passenger ferries continued to serve the route until the outbreak of the Second World War.  The service was revived briefly after the war and I travelled on it at some time before its closure in 1952.

I understand there was an attempt  to run a catamaran service in the early 90s but it didn't last long sadly. 

I went on to the beach and rested for a bit ruminating on my other connections with Burntisland.

It was the home of one of my sisters in law.  The family of one of my school friends made lemonade there.  I had a girlfriend from there.  Another childhood friend's brother settled in the town.  In my late teens I was in with a crowd who would drink cider and smoke late at night up on the local hill called The Binn.  Somone had access to a car to get us there.  

Fortunately the tide was out because then you can walk the next stage on the beach, otherwise you have to follow the main road.

Again you get great views of Edinburgh as you go along.

A noticeboard just before you leave Burntisland handily points out a couple of escape points should the tide come in.  One of those is by the monument to Alexander III who fell off his horse there en route to join his second wife the young Yolande de Dreux, but when I got to what I thought was that point I couldn't be bothered climbing up to it.  So I've borrowed this picture of it from Wikimedia.

Striding on into Pettycur bay I took some more pictures.  Here is a distant view of the bridges.  So distant that you really need a click to make them visible.

There's a lot of sand on this beach.  I thought the poles sticking up here and there might have been for some form of net fishing but a quick google tells me they were in fact defences against gliders landing.  

A little further on you come to the pretty vast conglomeration of holiday homes that overlook the beach.  Can't say I fancy it.  I have erected a tent on the beach in the dim and distant past but that was not to provide overnight accommodation, rather a shelter for discreet changing into swimwear or discreet canoodling.

There's a hotel in the middle of the park where I saw the Inverkeithing Community Big Band perform an excellent gig as part of the Fife Jazz Festival a few years ago.  I've got to know some of the players since then.

Pettycur was one of the points from which ferries crossed the Forth centuries ago but the harbour is a very tranquil spot today.

The last leg was a bit of a slog uphill from the harbour into Kinghorn but I was rewarded with this lovely view of the beach.  I thought of rewarding myself with a spot of lunch at the bar with a garden not far from this viewpoint but the Covid mitigation ordering system just seemed a bit too tedious so I didn't bother.

This is another beach that I frequented when I was a kid.  I particularly remember the evangelical groups who would tell bible stories and get us all singing religious songs.  The only one I could remember as I sat looking out over the beach was "the wise man built his house upon a rock" but google later brought a number to mind such as "this little light of mine" and "Jesus loves me" .  Youtube is full of them.  They sound a little jazzier than I remember the tambourine shakers of Kinghorn producing but the messages are there and I'm sure my ten year old self would have been thrilled if they'd had Youtube on a big screen.