Tour Fife

I was born, and raised, in The Kingdom of Fife. Born in Buckhaven which is is an old coastal fishing town on the east coast of fife. Once a thriving weaving village and fishing port, it was reported as having in 1831 the second-largest fishing fleet in Scotland. The fishing declined during the 19th Century but by 1860 Buckhaven developed as a mining town. At a very young age I was moved to the coastal village of Cellardyke in the East Neuk of Fife. In the 1860s Cellardyke was a thriving town, with more than fifty boat owners and skippers year round. Around 200 fishing boats were once based here but much of the fishing fleet was destroyed by a fierce storm in 1898. Cellardyke harbour is mostly used by pleasure craft these days, but the village still retains the architecture and culture of an East Neuk fishing village. I will always remember the wonderful days I spent playing on the rocky coastline of Cellardyke and the adjacent village of Anstruther. I know all of Fife intimately, and love to visit Fife on my small group tours of Scotland.

Fife has always been one of Scotland's most distinctive counties. Though never a kingdom in its own right, its geographical position as a peninsular county between the firths of Tay and Forth has helped maintain its self-contained identity through the ages. Not surprising for a county of such historical resonance, Fife contains a huge number of houses, churches and castles that witnessed events that quite literally shaped the nation. This work introduces the reader to these places and those associated with them, from the great abbeys of Lindores and Balmerino and the major towns of St Andrews, Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy to the beautiful villages of the East Neuk and the islands of the Firth of Forth. It also introduces some of the less familiar details from Fife's to produce a complete introduction to this county. Fife in History and Legend.

This work is an account of the people of Fife and their village and Hamlet communities from medieval times to the present day. Fife has seen many major events in Scottish history, and this work covers the places, parishes and people; their leaders, labour and leisure and the part all strata of village society played in the vibrant county with the pretentions of a kingdom. From Kingbarns to Saline and from Wormit to Dysart, this work reveals the myriads of villages and how they developed, showing how they are as alive today as they ever were, still contributing to the ongoing story of Fife. It covers all of Fife's villages and hamlets and is arranged in a reader-friendly A-Z format, allowing each settlement to be located and enjoyed separately or as part of a wider specific area. Villages of Fife.

Fife's most famous buildings include Dunfermline Abbey, with its sturdy Norman nave; St Andrews cathedral, the focus of the old University town on the North Sea coast; the foursquare post-Reformation kirk at Burntisland; the palace of Falkland, where James V became Britain's first patron of Renaissance architecture on the grand scale; and the little royal burghs along the coastal fringe, each with its harbour and its strings of vernacular houses presided over by the kirk and tollbooth. Cupar, at the centre of Fife's long peninsula, is the seat of local government and one of the most charming and prosperous of Scottish towns. Less well known are Fife's tower houses like Scotstarvit, the old seaboard castles of St Andrews and Ravenscraig, the picturesque Balgonie Castle and the thoroughly domesticated Kellie Castle. Of Fife's churches one of the most beautiful is Dairsie; and three centuries of inventive design in burial monuments come to an unexpected climax in a work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the MacDuff cemetery, East Wemyss. Fife (Pevsner Buildings of Scotland).

A guide to the Fife coast which takes the reader or walker from the Forth Bridge along the castles coast and then into the East Neuk. The book is in sections allowing a walk from end to end or a days sampling of a particular spot. The Fife Coast: From the Forth Bridges to Leuchars by the Castles Coast and the East Neuk.