St Andrews

It’s a good job we had the sat nav on for the directions to this site as the directions in the book were rubbish! On arrival the man from the van next door introduced himself and his son and we had a chat for a while before setting up the van and heading out to the beach at Leven, down the road. This was Prince’s birthday treat and he loved it, playing around in the sea and digging holes while we walked and had our lunch. Back at the van we had a brew before going on another short walk from the site up to the top of the hill up the road, we had fantastic views of the sea and St Andrews and saw some horses near the top of the hill, a fox wandering through the meadow, and even a deer who was hiding in the gorse. Barbeque for tea then watched Ghana lose to Uraguay in a tense match that went to penalties, shame Ghana didn’t win as they were the last African nation in it, Linda was gutted as she was supporting them!

Next day we headed into St Andrews, a town which is known worldwide as the home of golf. We parked on the sea front in a car park by the famous club house, and then walked into the town past some of the large grandstands which were currently being constructed ready for the big event. We walked down one of the side roads and past some of the university buildings, the St Andrews university is also a famous institution and is where Prince William received his university education. We spotted a university quadrangle which was open and so we went in for a look around and took a few photos of the lovely old buildings within the square. Further down the road we reached the ruins of St Andrews castle, an imposing ruin which looks out to sea to its North side and guards the town to the south. Finally we went down to the harbour, past the large ruins of the cathedral which was, in its day, the largest in the country. Nowadays all that is left is 4 of the towers, the foundations and lots of gravestones, it is free to wander around but you have to pay if you want to go up any of the towers. We had a look at the little harbour, which looked very colourful in the sunshine and then we headed back into the town centre. On the way back to the car we had a walk onto the golf course (The Old Course), we walked over the 1st and 18th tee in amongst all the grandstands which were ready for the throngs of people that would be here next week for the Open Championship. We took some photos in front of the club house and on the famous Swilken Bridge which has seen so many of the open golf champions making their final walk to the last hole. We’ll have to watch it on the telly next week now, just so that we can see where we’ve been! We moved the car from the pay and display and drove round to the huge St Andrews beach where we took the dogs for a play in the sea. We both paddled in the sea up to our knees and managed to encourage Smudge to come in up to her knees too, she even looked like she was enjoying it! Prince was swimming around with his new Dogobie (Frisbee) which he had for his birthday, and having a great time. We went up to the dunes where we sat in the sun and ate our butties, while being peppered with sand which was being blown by the wind, it made our sandwiches crunchy! We then went back to the waters edge where Phil went in the water up to his chest, it was bloody freezing though so he was soon back out! Wet through, we made a bid for the car and drove back to the campsite.

Heavy rain was forecast for most of the day today, and we awoke to the sound of rain and wind that didn’t sound like it was going to let up anytime soon. After waiting for it to stop for a while we gave up and headed into St Andrews. On arrival the rain had stopped and the sun was peeping through the clouds, so we decided to take the opportunity to take the dogs for a walk on the beach. We parked at the same spot as before and had a nice walk down the huge beach. On the way back to the car we spotted that a kite boarder and 2 windsurfers on wheels had turned up and were whizzing around on the beach, they must have spotted the sunshine too!

Back at the 'van we got chatting again to Ray, our next ‘van neighbour who said he was just back briefly as he had to head back to Cupar, a town down the road where they were having their summer highland games. He recommended we head out there, so we made a packed lunch and drove down the road. One thing Ray didn’t tell us was that the main road from our site to Cupar was closed due to a collapsed bridge, so we had to drive round the houses to get there. The signage for the car park was terrible too, and we ended up in an empty school car park wondering where the event was! We got out and took our picnic across the road where we could hear a loudspeaker, and just as we got out the heavens opened again! Lots of people were leaving and it looked like the event was over, so we went back to the car and had our picnic sat in the car park before driving back home!

The next morning went out for a 6mile walk down to the nearby Cameron Reservoir, a manmade lake that was used to service St Andrews, but is now retired and just used for recreational fishing and walking. When we got there a noticeboard told us to look in the anglers shed for examples of stuffed fish, and when we stuck our heads in there was a guy in there who showed us a few mounted fish before taking us out to the freezers where he pulled out this year’s biggest catch, a 7lb brown trout! Prince was licking his lips! We carried on over the dam and continued our walk round the reservoir and back towards the ‘van. The path was signposted but very overgrown, and in places we were just following our noses, we eventually came across a series of ramshackle buildings with a load of dead cars surrounding them, where we had to go through overgrown nettles and brambles to get to the path along the drive to the road. We then picked up a path which took us alongside a potato field back to the ‘van, we spotted a lone figure in the massive field walking up and down and pulling out the occasional plant. We later learned from the campsite owner that he was probably pulling out ‘rogue’ potatoes, and normally there would be a team of them, it is an organic farm so they have to do everything the natural way.. We wandered what constituted a ‘rogue’ potato, and surmised that it must be one campaigning for the use of chemicals! After lunch we headed out in Tonks to Tentsmuir Forest, a huge Forestry Commission enterprise just North of St Andrews which has picnic and barbeque facilities, walks, cycle and horse rides, and is right next to a huge beach. We had a walk over the dunes and onto Tentsmuir Sands, a vast expanse of flat beach where both dogs had a great run around and even Smudge had a few paddles in the pools which the sea had left behind

The next day we moved to a Caravan Club site in Braemar, a lovely little town in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park.