Fisherman is safe and sound, even managing to catch a large salmon and many trout. Impressively navigated himself back to Edinburgh from far far north Scotland (Thurso). Me - I would have probably ended up in the North Sea. Now I am no longer a solo traveller there has been a return of ''half pint'' being my pseudonym largely for when we visit pubs. Stephen would be ''pint'' I guess but doesn't quite have the same ring about it. Anyway half pint and her partner have visited a few pubs as half pint does not like visiting them when a solo traveller. Suspect we will get to a few over the course of our stay.
The full marathon actually went straight past our place Sunday morning. Was good fun cheering on the runners, some dressed in weird and wonderful outfits. We were not sure how BuzzLightYear was going to be able to run a full marathon.
Having a car for now we decided on a day trip on a bright sunny and pretty warm day actually. We drove into the Kingdom of Fife which is on the east coast, a place we do not know. Very pretty fishing villages in an area called East Neuk (Neuk meaning ''corner'' apparently in old Scots). Essentially a little ring of towns facing the North Sea. We went to a little place called Elie and Anstruther. Both have lovely beaches and are very sea-sidy holiday places. Both part of old trading links with the Netherlands and Belgium so the architecture is sometimes a bit different - they have these crow step gables on their roofs and tiles made of clay not slate. This was pointed out to us by a visiting Edinburgh person who we got chatting to. Slightly more interesting than just dismissing them as Scottish sea-side holiday places. Back to a more mundane topic - Anstruthers is known for its fish and chips we read so we thought our main meal today would be fish and chips. Was very nice - not much dinner for us tonight. We wondered why the place was so busy though for a weekday, only to find ourselves face to face with Nicola Sturgeon the leader of the Scottish National Party. She was campaigning. Disappointingly she ignored us.
After our brush with the UK election, we drove onto St Andrews. Only really knew of it as being the place for golf and an old University. It is a very scenic place full of medieval buildings including a ruined cathedral overlooking the North Sea. The University is huge and occupies a huge number of the buildings in the town centre. There is even still west and east medieval city gates. Now lots of tourists (and golfers of course). Pretty wealthy place. The St Andrews Link is impressive looking. It overlooks a long sandy beach which is where the beach run scene in Chariots of Fire was filmed. Looked to be a great beach for a long walk. Watched a few people teeing off. Lots of Americans. Loved that there is a little burn (stream) running through it with a little stone bridge over the burn that was built some 700 years ago to allow shepherds to get livestock across the burn. Even for a non-golfer it had quite an atmosphere.
The University is old - founded in the 15th century. They say the 3rd oldest in the English speaking world. Of course being me I wonder why such a big Uni sprang up here and discover religion and Scottish independence (so intertwined here) caused its formation. Scottish students had to stop attending Uni in England because of wars with England; the Scots then went to Uni in Paris but the Scots decided they didn't like the French Pope and the students were left with no Uni to attend. So the enterprising Scots (when it was still largely catholic) got another Pope who they did like, to issue an edict for the formation of a Uni here. St Andrews was important in the Catholic world so St Andrews was a natural choice for the new Uni.
There were also a lot of running battles between the Catholics and Protestants here once the reformation got going. It is scattered with reminders of these. There are markings on cobblestones which indicate where executions took place (mainly the Protestants executed by the Catholics although I assume it ran both ways). John Knox delivered some fiery sermon here which kicked off the Scottish Reformation. I seem to run into this John Knox character a lot.
Tried to ascertain whether St Andrews really was the place where golf was invented given Leith Links allegedly is the place where golf was first played. St Andrews claims the first evidence of golf played there was in 1552 and Leith Links says it was in 1554 so I think St Andrews may win by a whisker but who really knows. I did read that the monarchy kept banning the game because it was distracting the men from their military training and given the Scots were perpetually fighting the English; this was an issue. Finally, and not soon enough, in 1502 the ban on golf was lifted when the "Treaty of Perpetual Peace" between England and Scotland was signed. What a relief.
Stephen is watching ""Hinterland"" - a BBC show we watch in Australia. Challengingly it is in Gaelic. OK there are sub-titles but made a good story.
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