Journey's end...or is it?

I spent a lovely few days in Berwickshire - after I got pulled out of the field, that is. Looking around St Abbs, which is a very pretty seaside place, Coldingham beach with its old-fashioned beach huts and cafe, and a little walk along the coastal path towards Berwick Upon Tweed.





Berwick upon Tweed is actually in England. It's a little stately town right on the coast. And to get to it I had to cross the English border - rats - I meant it to be a big ceremony, but I did it accidentally looking for a campsite!



While I was at St Abbs on the coastal path an enormous bang made Bonnie and I jump out of our skins - it was the lifeboat signal, and people came running and launched the little RIB. A guy came running up the hill and seized the binoculars of one of the people I was just chatting to, a bird-watcher, and told us that two divers had gone into the sea off the shore and not come out. Before long, the larger lifeboat appeared round the coast followed by a helicopter. I left before it had all concluded, but I heard later on the news that the search had been called off. Luckily, it seems it was a false alarm - nobody reported any divers missing, so they thought perhaps they hadn't gone in after all.


I also had a look at Kelso - the picture below is a view out of a window down onto the square. It's a lovely town with a lot of Georgian houses and a cobbled square - I'm sure it must get used on films a great deal.



Coldingham Beach, also below, is very tiny bay, but sandy, and it even has its own surf school.




I chose the scenic route back - first down to a site near Bamburgh Castle. You can see it below in the distance, and it was walkable from the site. So on our second-to-last morning, Bonnie and I walked down there to the beach. The coast is full of seabirds, and very open and dramatic.



The farmer there had a new Beardie puppy who was going to learn to be a sheepdog. She was only 14 weeks old, but already listening to everything he said. He was very quietly spoken and very good with his dogs. When we got talking, he revealed he'd written a novel and a documentary about fishermen in Eyemouth, sailed a boat across the Med this summer to deliver it to someone, and had very definite views about whether Marlowe had actually been killed in a brawl, or gone abroad undercover and continued to send Shakespeare material for his plays. Which only goes to prove - if you want to know anything about anything, ask a Northumbrian farmer.



I passed through some lovely Yorkshire countryside, including Masham, a beautiful town which was due to have its yearly sheep fair the next day. I couldn't stay, unfortunately, because I had a pizza date in Derbyshire, but I caught them putting up the pens. Caroline and Alan went. Masham and surrounding area are definitely on the list for another visit. Very beautiful, and packed with nice walks.





I spent some time near Harrogate and met up with Tony, Caroline, and Martin from Leeds University - the site was a little countryside one which looked not much from the road but had a lovely view over a valley. Caroline came for supper, and it was great to see her again and catch up a bit (although I'm not sure I gave her the chance to say much: sorry Caroline!)



And I even stopped off at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park! Having driven past it twice a week for two years on the way to Leeds without going in, I decided it was high time. The weather was lovely, and I enjoyed it a lot just as a park - good job really, because the signage and directions are so bad that if you are looking for anything you won't find it unless it's large enough to be sticking up out of the landscape. It was full of lost people - wayfinders out there, take note!



In Derbyshire I spent time with Annie, Martin, and my Mum, and good friends Neil and Rebecca - and their new puppy Jellybean. She is lovely - and seems to be a very good girl, despite being so young.



While I was there I had a quick look at Eden End Cottage, one of the places I lived most recently before I came to London. The new owners have adapted it a bit, but otherwise it looks the same as when I was there.




I got back on Thursday 2nd to Whilton Marina caravan storage place, having cleaned the van (with the help of Alison and Christopher in Derbyshire - thanks guys) to within an inch of its life. It looked sparkling, everything was packed up and cleaned and emptied and ready for me to leave it. Except - I arrived twenty minutes after the storage place had shut at 6, so drove back into a nearby village called Norton and had an extremely nice pub meal at The White Horse. They let me stay in their carpark overnight - I was trying not to dirty anything so slept in my sleeping bag - until I could drop the van off in the morning.



And here we are again - back to the pile of bags in the front room!

Get your coat - you're going to pull

I'm in Berwickshire, and this post is about mud.

Two nights ago, I went to a campsite near Kelso, one of those that only takes five vans, and was invited in by a very nice farmer and his wife (they're retired now, and their son is running the farm). The first thing I had to tell them was that I had only just arrived and I was stuck in their field. Not axle-deep stuck, but gentle front-wheel-spinning stuck. They were very calm and good about it and said that it was happening to everyone this year - in fact, the farmer's wife said it was the worst year for rain since 1948 - and they would pull me out in the morning with a 4X4. Which they did, without fuss, the old farmer hooking up my van and just driving off, and me skidding about behind him.

I stayed two days there, uneventfully, and today (you see? I'm up to date!) went over to see St Abbs and Coldingham, which are beautiful little beaches with the Berwickshire Coastal Path running along them. And then I spotted another small site at Coldingham, which I duly rolled into. The farmer there was even older, and I couldn't understand him very well. He was eating his dinner when I arrived, but patiently waited while I filled the van with water from his garden hose, which seemed to take ages, and then fetching me change, which also seemed to take ages. And then he launched into a long description about where I should park, with my front wheels on hard standing (it's front-wheel drive) so that I didn't get stuck.

The trouble was, I didn't understand the diagram he drew in the air, and went right across the field to where I thought the hard standing was. And got stuck. He was obviously a bit annoyed about this, because I hadn't done what I was told, but totally unable to help: they had no useful vehicles. I didn't know what to do, but thought it was a better idea to do it in the morning - and he was getting into a bit of a state and I suspect still missing his dinner. So I told him I'd get some friends to do it (who?) and he seemed satisfied with that, and went back in the house.

Once he'd gone, I cursed myself again for not remembering to buy wheelmats. These are basically plastic grippy things that you can poke under your wheels to get some traction. So using the same principle, I tried various things. Putting the doormats under the front wheels. No luck, and muddy doormats. Putting pebbles under the front wheels, having dug out the worst of the mud with a table knife. No luck. So I put a lasagne in the oven, lit a fag, and opened the second of the emergency Baileys miniatures (thanks Annie) and poured the whole thing into a cup of coffee. I was quite cross and upset, feeling stupid myself but also a bit annoyed at the arcane impossible-to-follow instructions. It's not relaxing spending the night in a stuck van, even though it is identical in every respect to spending the night in a non-stuck one. It sort of hangs over you that it can't move, and it ruins your evening thinking you have a big problem to deal with in the morning.

So, fortified by Baileys, I decided I was going to get a four-wheel drive vehicle by fair means or foul. The place is full of farmers, I told myself, even if they are exhausted shadows of their former selves at the moment. So I shut the dog in the van and marched off down the road. I'm not sure what I thought I was going to do. See someone in a field and grab them, or stop a tractor going by, because that's generally a sign that the person also has a 4X4 (the tractor itself would rip up the field too much), or stop a 4X4 that had mud on it (there's a guy on the site that has a Freelander, but it's only a toy, and he was sitting and watching all of this from his trailer, so obviously not inclined to help). I had no luck out on the road, so I carried on down the hill about a mile to Coldingham, and spotted a The Anchor pub. I went in and looked at the clientele, and finally chose a burly, friendly-looking chap at the bar. I asked him if he was local, and explained my predicament. He got all keen about helping - to the extent that he sent his wife off to get his Mitsubishi Shogun while he had another pint. Turns out he's not a farmer (they're far too busy to be in the pubs) but a deep-sea fisherman from St Abbs (with seven brothers, and seven boats, all fishing out of Eyemouth). So one thing this chap has is rope.

He and his very sympathetic wife (she drove, and made 'there there' sort of noises) gave me a lift back to camp in the 4X4. We had a nice chat on the way, and they thought it hilarious that I'd come out leaving a lasagne in the oven, and was being brave on the strength of a Baileys miniature. We hooked up the vehicles and fisher-man (I didn't even ask his name) pulled me out just like that, backwards, much to the delight of the site owner who obviously was amazed I'd managed to come back with a vehicle. As am I, really - would I, at the beginning of this trip, had the nerve to walk into a pub and ask someone to drive a couple of miles during an evening out to pull me out of the mud? I think it's also a credit to the Berwickshire people - who are, apart from Hebrideans, the friendliest and kindest bunch I've met on this trip. They refused any money for the diesel, and said it was just nice to help someone in trouble.

So everyone's happy. My van's out, and all parties have a good story to tell. I must get stuck in the mud more often - you meet such lovely people.

Postscript: Today (Monday) I went down to St Abbs and had a coffee at The Smithy before starting a walk - I mentioned to the lady there that I was in a camper van, and she said, 'Are you the one that got stuck in the mud last night?' Turns out she knows Val and James (for it was they) and where they lived. So I went down to the Post Office in St Abbs, and the chap there - William - knew the family, and the rest of the address, so I got them a thank-you card. And was going to post it through their door until another lady, Helen, came in and said she was James's sister-in-law and she'd post it in for me. She'd also heard all about it and teased me mercilessly. I seem to be making a lot of friends in St Abbs!

The girl is mined

[Hurray! This post now has all its images - four more added Tues 29 Sept!]

Ah, Edinburgh, home from home. My visits to Jon and Vina's flat on Findhorn Place are becoming closer together (I was last here when I came up in May to run the Edinburgh 10K, although that seems aeons ago). I parked my van on their front drive, skilfully arriving just as the parking restrictions expired for the weekend. The van managed to squeak in with a few inches on each side, and I put my awning up so that we all had somewhere to shelter from the rain as we went across the lawn. Because, of course, it was raining. Again.


It was lovely to see them again, and their two boys, Hugh and Seth. I've mentioned them before I think - Hugh wants to put me right in my claim that it was a visit to Doune Castle with me that got him into fencing, because he had a sword before. So there's that for the record. Hugh is very like Jon, I think, a calm person who thinks deep thoughts, whereas Seth is a break-dancing, mountain-biking ball of energy - in fact he's seldom the right way up. I think the photos of the two of them point up the difference quite nicely. Hugh is reading a book, and Seth isn't exactly busting moves, but he looks like he might any minute. I missed the eldest, Liberty, this time, because she's in her first year at Bristol University.

Vina has great skill in making a home - she will deny it, but she's a very good cook, and we had a lot of very nice meals while I was there. They have the sort of fridge that has things like olives, mushroom pate, and many kinds of cheese in it. They have lots of flavours of tea, always use a milk-jug, and keep their butter in a proper dish in the shape of a turkey. They also have classical music on a lot and have an electric pepper-grinder with a light in it. And they have a fab book collection - I nearly always discover a new poet while I'm in their bathroom (I ask them not to watch while I'm in the shower). I see their way of living as graceful and rather inspiring, and have learned a lot from them - not least to the importance of filling your house and life with things and experiences that make the heart glad, that don't necessarily cost the earth. Things like music, going for walks even though it's raining, fresh flowers, good books, proper cooking, and amusing china - all food for the soul. I bought them a pink and green decorated bowl at Crail Pottery and was pleased to see it fit in right away. And also gratified to see that they are still using the soup bowls that Robert and I bought them from Morocco in about 1988 (I seem to think everything happened in 1988, but it's there or thereabouts).



One of the first things we did was go with Hugh to see Jon's newly-built Department at Edinburgh University, the Informatics Building. It replaces an unsightly carpark in the middle of the University quarter, right next to the Students' Union building. It is tall and graceful and has a lot of white detail and glass, a Paolozzi sculpture in the foyer, fascinating spiral staircases, and lots of nice areas for getting together with colleagues and sitting on fashionable seating. As you'll observe from the photograph, I got quite severely stuck in one of the beanbags, which was amusing and not very Professorial. But I'm not being a Professor at the moment (Jon is, and looks like a proper one) as you'll observe from my style of dress. The building is a real achievement, for Jon personally as well as for the discipline, because Edinburgh is a world-class centre for informatics (artificial intelligence, computer science, philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, robotics, computer vision...I am sure I have missed a few) and it now has a building to match both its reputation and its ambitions. When I was there (it were all trees...no) we were in the old tenement buildings along Buccleuch Place, with computer science a mile or so away in King's Buildings, and another lot (the robot people) in Forrest Road and AI in a building on South Bridge that burnt down a couple of years ago.

We were among the first people on the planet to have email (1984) which consisted of the ability to send text files to people who were on the ARPAnet, who were mainly in California, as well as to each other. And we amusingly, now, shared a single computer with the AI department, so people in two buildings were competing for its attention. My relationship with Robert may be one of the first romances to begin over email. And so that we could all get on the computer when we wanted to, Jo Calder wrote a little program that would pretend you were using a terminal even when you weren't to avoid losing it to AI. Lor, how we laughed as we huddled together in those draughty tenement offices warming our hands in front of a glowing green screen. You had to make your own amusement in those days. There is probably an entire (rather geeky) book about the days before t'interweb, where your idea of sophistication was sending three lines of ascii text to someone you probably didn't know at Stanford or Berkeley, just because you could. And there were even real coffee filter machines, because some of the academics (and a lot of them were Dutch, let's face it - logicians are nearly always Dutch) preferred it - this was the height of sophistication to me, who'd grown up in a linguistics department at Nottingham with a silver kettle on a frayed flex, a jar of Bird's Mellow, a stained mug if you could find one and no milk. But I digress.

(Sorry, distracted for a moment there - Bonnie is running violently in her sleep, and apparently chewing on an imaginary something. I think it is Toffee, a pet rabbit we met today in a run in somebody's garden. In yer dreams, Bon. Toffee is all tucked up warm in his hutch, and not chewed at all.)

Anywayup, it was shortly after the Informatics visit that I realised I had left my washing in the dryer at Yellowcraigs, about 40 mins up the coast. Vina was very sensible about this and proposed a visit immediately, to go for a walk and retrieve the laundry. They go there quite a lot anyway, so we all piled into the car and (after finding the washing neatly folded by some kind camper, and all dry) did the walk from Yellowcraig to North Berwick again. In North Berwick we went to visit Jon's brother Eric and his wife Rosie, who gave us a very nice cup of tea in a lovely flat that is all corners, occupying the whole top floor of a stately house, with views from every side of the town and the sea. And Eric is very funny - I note particularly his suggestion for the Scottish version of YouTube, which is called (this is the nearest I can get to the pronunciation) 'Yeh choob, ye' (calling someone a 'tube' is a bit like calling them a 'muppet' in English).



On the way there and back Seth golfed all the way along the beach, and Vina did a bit, too - I have some lovely pictures. A particularly nice one of J and V which they say is the best they've had for ages.


And then I found something. A round thing that looked vaguely familiar. I called the others over and they thought it might be something off a yacht, but something in my head was telling me it was a landmine. I showed it to Hugh on the camera when I got home and he thought that it was probably a float of some kind, but even so I went on the Maritime and Coastguard Agency's website (which is TERRIBLE by the way - someone ring them up and offer them a new one - Stewart? Martin C? Iain?) and sent them an email, with attached photo, and the subject line 'Is this a landmine?'

They rang back two days later and left a message for me to call them, so I did. The Coastguard sounded excited. They hadn't thought much of it either but had sent it off to the Navy Bomb Disposal just in case, and they got back and said yes, it's an anti-tank mine but only a practice one, because it was blue not green. Which means tanks go over it and a fuse goes off and lots of smoke comes out - it won't kill anyone but it might go off if you stand on it (which I didn't, but you'll see from the pawmark that Bonnie nearly did). The guy told me on the phone that the Bomb Disposal had already been out and 'marked it' (presumably they also took it away, eventually) but I was so pleased with myself I can't tell you. And then I realised that I had more or less been thinking, 'Oh great, it IS potentially dangerous to the general public!'. (I told Lesley in Lossiemouth this story and she told me that their house had once been owned by a fisherman who had caught a bomb in his net, brought it home, and put it under the stairs, where it ended up bricked in until Lesley and Luke decided to open up the area for a cupboard. The Bomb Disposal had to come to their house, too, as well as evacuating the neighbours. When they told the previous owner, she said, 'Oh, you found that, did you?')

I told the guy I'd recognised my landmine because I'd just watched 'Ice Cold in Alex', where they have to cross a minefield in Egypt in an army ambulance. And they were doing that in black and white, so it must have been so much harder to spot the mines. Anyway, I'm pleased to have shared a moment with the coastguard, because he agreed it was a jolly good film. It's worth looking at 'beach ordnance' or 'ammunition dump UK' on Google, by the way - there is apparently around 2m tons of old ordnance in the sea, a lot of it between the UK and Ireland, and according to some it's all getting a bit tired and dodgy and liable to go off (some of it's from WW1). What you can do with this knowledge I've no idea. Except keep an eye on the beaches after bad weather -- good luck with finding a working email address for the Coastguard from their website (or you could ring 999, but I thought that was a bit over the top. If the thing looks like any kind of missile, though, perhaps you should).


Unexploded ordnance aside, while I was in Edinburgh, too, Vina kindly offered to invite some people over so that I could see them - and so Claire, Marc, and daughter Catrin came for lunch (we were even able to sit on the lawn). It was great to see them. I used to share an office with Marc, who is very smart and funny in a dry way, and Belgian (I remember he once told me that English and German were both dialects of Dutch, which is one way of looking at it). I have some examples from him in my PhD thesis - I remember buying a new holepunch for myself and showing it to him - and he said 'But it was a STAPler I wanted', Which was amusing, but also told me a lot about information structure.* Then later on, when Claire came to Edinburgh, I shared an office with her for at least two years, and we became great friends. She even still has a plant pot in her office which I brought with me from home in 1984 - a big plastic pot that Annie had used as a bin. I know because it says 'A Delin Wastebin' on the side in green dymo tape. It's good to know that Claire is still watering the plant. Because she is a long-standing member of the Department she tends to end up with the plants of everyone who is going back to where they came from (Stanford or The Netherlands, usually, to wreak logic upon the whiteboards of other continents). I had five goldfish, but I took them with me when I left.

Last time I saw Catrin (here we go again, old Auntie stories) she was about four. She loved Bonnie - and rushed back up the beach at Portobello to tell us that Bonnie had smiled at her. She's now grown up. I am now doing a good impression of the embarrassing whiskery old aunt who smells of fags and old dog, and insists on kissing you even when you haven't a scooby** who she is. But when I grow old I shall wear purple, and it will be worse. So brace yourselves, kids. I will be kissing not just you, but your children, before long. Actually, I must say that Seth poked me in the arm while I was staying with Jon and Vina, and I take that to be a sign of affection. Thanks Seth. Poke. I know Hugh likes me because I make him laugh in spite of himself. He will deny this.




On my last day I went shopping at all the nice shops and made Jon and Vina a big lasagne for my last evening with them, bought three bottles of wine, made a fruit salad with some strawberries and that really sweet little yellow mango in it, and then snuck off the next morning after they'd gone to work. I then went up Arthur's Seat the steep way and admired the view, and decided not to leave Edinburgh right away, because I'm still stuck on the idea of getting a flat there, sooner or later, and I wanted to do some viewings. So I moved down to the campsite at Silverknowes for two nights and went in and out of the city on the (clean, cheap, regular) bus.

I also had some work to do. I'd managed to do a bit at Jon and Vina's but with them to talk to each evening I didn't persevere, so I set myself up a very nice workplace in the van at the campsite (I even got the table out) and had a thoroughly nice day. I really enjoyed the work. And thought, this is just about ideal - I can work with the dog for company, the kettle an arm's length away, and I can do little bits of tidying and go for a walk along the coast whenever I feel like it. It was great. Isn't technology wonderful. Happy client, happy dog, happy me.


* I once got a research grant for two years on the basis of something a European student said to me in Sussex. My office was next door to the admin office, and they were out, and this student wanted to hand her essay in. She poked her head round my door and said, 'Have you got any of that liquid that erases THINGS?' I thought, if I had, I'd be rich by now. Cue government-funded research project on pitch accent placement. Question: why doesn't that sentence work? Why should it be 'erASes things'?
** Scooby Doo = Clue. Is this Scottish rhyming slang, or is it English as well?

East Lothian Fencing Club

On a very rainy day, I crossed the Forth Bridge to East Lothian. Skirted through Edinburgh - I was saving that for later - and went on along the East Lothian coast to Dirleton, where there's a Caravan Club site right on top of some of the nicest coastal walks in the country: Yellowcraig and the beach walks along to North Berwick in one direction and Gullane and Aberlady in the other. In the coastline photo at the top, you can see Edinburgh in the distance, with Arthur's Seat on the left and Edinburgh Castle on the right.


I had a great first day - walked along the coast to North Berwick, and once there, had a picnic in town followed by a visit to the Scottish Seabird Centre. For a price, you can go downstairs to their display area where they have live cameras trained on the Isle of Fidra, the Isle of May, the Bass Rock, and some other places. The Bass Rock is white with gannets - a huge proportion of the UK population of gannets live there - and although it seems a bit voyeuristic, you can zoom the cameras in on pairs of gannets doing pair-bonding neck-stretching displays, arguing, tidying, and (the best bit) dive-bombing head first into the water in search of fish. I had to leave Bonnie outside for this bit, and she complained and barked all the time, although a lady selling raffle tickets in the foyer observed that she only started barking when I was in the vicinity.



North Berwick is a very pretty, genteel sort of town, with interesting little shops and delis on the main street and large, stately villa houses built of warm sandstone. There are also some fairly posh hotels, because the place (like many of these coastal towns) is famous for its golf courses. It reminded me a bit of St Andrew's, or suburbs of Edinburgh like Grange or Morningside, except on the coast.



Day two was a less ambitious walk to Dirleton, which was only a mile or so away, and the path goes inland (it's the John Muir Trail - he came from round here. Those of you who have been to Yellowstone and Yosemite might have heard his name associated with those, too). The fields of brussels sprouts, I thought, looked beautiful - like wafts of green clouds.









Once in Dirleton the only place to go, really, is the castle, which is definitely worth a visit. Apart from lots more rooms than I remember it having, it also has a lovely herbaceous border in its walled garden. It's a bit past it now, but must have been lovely in the earlier months of the summer. The last time I was here was with Jon and Vina from Edinburgh and their two boys Hugh and Seth, and there was a ferocious and very exciting thunderstorm which saw us clustered in a ruined archway in the castle while forked lightning landed all around.




On the way back from the castle I decided to go east a bit before going down to the coastal path again for the easy walk to the campsite. That was where my troubles began. In Scotland, there is a thing called the Right to Roam, which basically says you can enter any land for recreational purposes as long as you don't damage anything. This part of the country is not only full of golf courses, which you cross at your peril, but an old house and estate called Archerfield which stretches way along the coast has been bought by Cala Homes for a great big development of relatively posh 4 and 5 bedroom 'executive homes'. But armed with my map, which has the footpaths marked on it, I ignored signs that said things like 'construction site - no entry' and went ahead onto the footpath, preparing myself to argue, Janet Street-Porter-Ramblers'-Association style, with anyone who got in my way. As it turned out, nobody got in my way, but I got lost among the golf course paths that weren't marked on the map and ended up walking a very long way along a six-foot green steel fence to the campsite. Except when I got there the fence didn't stop, and I was on the wrong side of it. I had to retrace my steps to try to find the beginning of the fence and get the right side of it, except this time I was on a thing called the West Links golf course, and got trapped on that instead. Woman walking dog round perimeter of golf course attracting attention of puzzled Indian golfers. To cut a long story short, I didn't get back to the campsite until 8 o'clock at night, having started back from Dirleton, a mile away, four hours earlier. I suppose the most offensive thing about it is the privatisation of the coastline, and the fact that Scotland in particular has long been a haven of free access and common land, particularly round the coast.

It made me think a bit about social membership and social exclusion. I did feel totally out of place on the golf course, and like I was going to be told off any minute. I felt the same about the Archerfield development. Walk past Archerfield house (you can see it in the picture) now and it has two Bentleys parked on the front lawn next to a Bentley logo, so presumably they're intended to attract the attention of their target market, the golfers whooshing up and down to the golf club in their 4X4s, presumably considering the while whether to buy one of Cala's 'Executive Homes'. I am at home on a public footpath, and at home on a Caravan Club site, and I couldn't find either, and thought for a while I would be found by a puzzled golfing tourist the next morning, thirsty and starving, curled up in a golf bunker with the dog, huddling together for warmth.

All the way along this coast, East Lothian Council has put height restrictors on the carparks, to prevent high vehicles - and one suspects particularly travellers' vans and trailers - getting in (it coincidentally means motorhomes can't, either). But on the Yellowcraig carpark is a small area where you don't have to go under a barrier, and on day 2 of my stay a group of travellers arrived. Given that those of us who are sanctified by having a home address are camped only fifty yards off in almost identical vehicles, it made me wonder what it is that makes us different. If anything. Before I knew the travellers were there, an odd notice appeared on the door of the campsite washblock, advising us to take care of our possessions and not to let anyone without a key into the washrooms. So as soon as the travellers arrived, the management were thinking about theft and Unauthorised Use of the Facilities. I wanted to be open-minded, but as soon as I walked to the beach on the first day I was there I saw a horde of traveller children intent on destroying first a tree and then something made of metal, very noisily. And then, of course, when they left, there were bags of rubbish everywhere, despite the plentiful supply of bins.

So despite thinking it was quite beautiful, I also came away thinking that my time in East Lothian had pointed up some interesting social issues. Here am I, comfy(ish) in the middle-class Caravan Club environment, wondering what to think of the travellers down the road, and at the same time feeling like the golfing-and-executive-home fraternity would look down their noses at me if they caught me with my grubby trainers on the golfcourse. I guess it's OK if we all stay behind our fences and don't get muddled up...

First class coast

Before I start, I must tell you about Fife light. Or try - because it's impossible to describe, so I hope you get an idea of its changing quality from the different colours in the photographs. The relatively flat terrain and expanse of sea (the Firth of Forth, on the other side of which is Edinburgh and East Lothian) there is an awful lot of sky. And the light is amazing, whatever is going on with the weather. There is a pinky-lilac-grey quality to the light a lot of the time, and at other times, particularly sunset, it's golden. The sea during the day shines like mercury. It is not surprising that Fife is home to a lot of artists. It's not an exciting place - the coastline doesn't have the drama of the islands - but there's a kind of peaceful translucence that settles over the land that is quietly captivating in the way it changes all the time. I have only been here a few days, but have over a hundred photographs of not much except sky.












Well, everything comes to she who waits - and today there was no wind, and enough sun to strip off a few layers, which hasn't been the case for quite a while. I celebrated by getting up early and embarking on a proper day out.

We started at Kellie Castle, which I didn't know much about but which turns out to have been the home for many years of Hew Lorimer the sculptor, son of Robert Lorimer the architect. Hew Lorimer was influenced by Eric Gill, particularly his sculptures, and was a follower of the Arts and Crafts style - simple, hand-crafted, beautiful artefacts for a social purpose. He did many sculptures for the church, and was also an accomplished letter-cutter. One of the most well-known of his works was Our Lady of the Isles, which I saw in the Hebrides. A smaller version of the sculpture is in his workshop, which has been preserved at Kellie (you can see her head here, with the light behind her, as well as another statue and some of his lettering).


Bon and I did a nice woodland walk and then I tied her up and visited the Walled Garden. Beautiful - happy people working there, clipping and digging away, and a lovely mixture of fruit trees (in fruit!), vegetables, and flowers. A useful garden in a lovely spot, and even the laden apple-trees looked as if they were designed by William Morris.


The villages in the East Neuk of Fife are famously pictureseque, full of little fishermen's cottages tottering down to a series of harbours. We started with Pittenweem. I parked by the harbour, and went to find a cup of coffee and a sandwich. I found a cafe and tied Bonnie to my backpack while I went in for the coffee, and when I got back out I found she'd pulled the bag across the pavement to talk to a lady who was sitting at one of the tables outside. I observed out loud that Bonnie had dragged her anchor, and the lady said, well we all do from time to time, don't we, otherwise, what's life for?

I then went along part of the Fife Coastal Path - via a long conversation with two dog-loving ladies sitting sunning themselves in front of one of the houses - and had a little picnic. The views back to the village were lovely. The houses are pretty and higgledy-piggledy with tiny walled gardens tucked away. They all have the characteristic crow-stepped gables and many houses have rooftiles that would be more at home in Portugal or Spain - that's because the tiles came as ballast in otherwise empty ships from just those places, and were dumped when the ships took on cargo in Scotland. Free rooftiles for Fife cottages! There are many galleries in Pittenweem, and it is a haunt of artists - I had a browse through a lovely shop called 'Funky Scotland', which is full of interesting indigenous ceramics, jewellery and textiles, but didn't succumb to anything.

I went through Anstruther, which lies between Pittenweem and Crail, without stopping. It's one of the most crowded and popular of the East Neuk villages and has two famous chip shops that both claim to be the best in Scotland (although most reports say that's a place in Tyndrum, but perhaps not wise to argue the point in Anstruther). It has the nearest to a commercial seafront, and is pretty, but not the place to be trying to park a camper van. So I went straight through to Crail, which has red sandstone buildings where Pittenweem's are painted white. Crail has a famous pottery, which we visited, and the Crail Gallery is home to a family of lino-cutters who make lovely pictures of Fife and the area. I was spoilt for choice here, and spent a long time in the shop talking to Susie Lacome, who makes detailed, naive pictures of Fife coastal scenes, featuring boats, cats, Fife cottages, gardens, and people chatting on the seafront. They are the kind of pictures that children love, because the more you look, the more little details you see. Her husband, David Sim, has a darker, more schematic style, perhaps more humourous and less literal, and her daughter Rachel Sim has a lovely eye for colour and composition - some of the same scenes, but less detailed and more 'stand back' pictures, again of boats and the villages. They are connected with Dundee School of Art where they make the bigger pictures, but Susie makes the smaller ones in the back of the shop. She's now doing collage work with lino-cut printed paper, some of which is old musical scores, so there is faint music on the cut-out houses and birds and pebbles. The lino she prints from is itself very pretty (although, of course, backwards) and she uses real lino from Kirkcaldy (which used to be, and perhaps is still, famous for it. Remember Nairn flooring?)


After spending an age in the shop (which you can probably tell from Bonnie's posture), I got the credit card out again. I would have liked something from each of them, but settled on a print of 'Eleven Dugs', which I'm attempting to show here. There's something feisty and cheerful about the dogs, I think, but they are also quite poignant. And it more than serves to address the dog/cat balance brought about by the Wemyss cat purchase.

All this is what I came to Fife hoping to experience again. I love the fact that people are working away in the cottages making wonderful things, and then can come out and sit among their flowers or pick vegetables from their gardens, watch the light change over the sea, and even create small pieces of philosophy on the spur of the moment to share with passers by!