Looking Up

The walk yesterday turned out to be a non-event so today we took ourselves off to Dalgety Bay to follow the Fife Coastal Path as far as Aberdour.

This is only a couple of miles of good path, but passes the interesting ruin of St Bridget's Kirk, which dates from 1170 and has several C17 gravestones, so we spent some time there. The path does not follow the water's edge but cuts inland to bypass the Braefoot Oil terminal, passing a golf course and arriving in Aberdour in the centre of town.

After an excellent lunch we explored the castle, which began as a Hall House built by Alan de Mortimer in the C12. This was extended vertically, to create a Tower House, in the C15 by the Douglas family, who added further buildings in the C16 and C17 and created terraced gardens and an orchard of some repute.

It isn't every day that one can stand inside a beehive dovecot and look upwards to the birds' entrance. This one dates from the late C16, contains 600 nest boxes in about 25 rows, tapering to the top. Apparently these were accessed by a revolving ladder called a potence., to collect eggs or squabs for the kitchen.

To save time we cheated slightly by catching a bus to the outskirts of Dalgety Bay, so needed walk only halfway round the bay back to the car.