On Sunday we took an afternoon trip to see the lovely finishing villages on Anstruther and Pittenweem in Fife, Scotland.
They view above looks out across the massive harbour at Anstruther into the North Sea. Somehow I managed to catch the sunbeam - that wasnt planned !
The villages are an hours drive from Edinburgh, so it wasnt that far for us. They are about 5 miles away from each other so its easy to visit both in the same day, and both are quite popular tourist destinations. I would say that Pittenweem is more quaint and prettier than Anstruther but ironically Anstruther was mobbed with tourists, whereas Pittenweem was deserted !
The harbour at Anstruther really is huge and likely goes back to around the late 1800s when there was a massive herring fishing industry here on the east coast of Scotland. Unfortunately, there were no controlled fishing practices in place back then, and after a number of decades of over fishing, the herring population collapsed and killed the industry. As a result there are lots of large harbours like this up and down the east coast of Scotland that are now rather empty.
We took a nice walk out to the end of the pier in Anstruther which was nice, but spent more of our time in Pittemweem because it is prettier.
Pittenweem is smaller and has more of an old-style fishing village feel to it with these lovely old houses along the seafront.
It also has some quite interesting remaining old sea accesses right beside the houses which look rather precarious. There was sand right up on the right near the front doors by this access, clearly showing that the water can get right up and into those front doors !
Above is another cool wee access right beside two of the older looking buildings - it was only big enough for a small rowing boat at best - but quite cool !
The harbour at Pittenweem is large, but not nearly as big as Anstruther's. However, it is still actively being used for creelers, with quite a few larger creel boats berthed in there. Fishing is now strictly controlled in Scotland in order to manage the fishing stocks in a sustainable way which is great, and as such there are far fewer fishing boats around these days. There were more large creelers docked here together (you cant see them all in this pic) then I've seen in a long time.
We quite enjoyed just strolling around along the harbour side and seafront taking in the sights - it was lovely.
The fish & chip shop had this cool mural painted on its side. Deep fried fish and chips is very common in Scotland, so you will always find a fish and chip shop where ever you go ! We didnt have any on sunday.
However a few doors down from the chip shop was this brightly coloured ice cream shop, and we did have some of that. It was lovely !
The lovely old church above was a dominating feature up in the main town centre.
It also had this lovely Pict style cross to one side (this is a fairly modern one).
The views out to see were quite nice all day, with the clouds making for some interesting scenery.
This feature sat out in the middle of the outer harbour wall at Pittenweem. The access was blocked of along that wall due to reconstruction work. I'm guessing its some kind of old navigation guidance feature (visual), and possibly a very small automated light.
Thats the old town square above, which has just a handful of shops. The village is bigger now, but that will date from its earlier days - probably early 1900s, but maybe as far back as the 1800s.
We found this lovely statue along the waterfront. Its a memorial to people lost at sea and or who worked in the fishing industry. Its still a very dangerous industry today, with ships lost at sea here annually in Scotland. It must have been even more deadly in years gone by without todays modern safety features.
Thats a picture of the breakwater above. The rocks are dumped over the side so that the waves crash a against them and loose there energy, instead of battering the sea wall and damaging it.
This house at the sea front had these model fishing boats on the wall of their house. It demonstrates just how much fishing means to this village.
On the boats above you can see their registration numbers starting KY. KY is short for Kirkcaldy, which is one of the larger towns in Fife, and that is where they would have been registered.
We really did have a lovely day out visiting both villages. We'd never been to Pittenweem before, although I had been to Anstruther once back in the 1990s. We just enjoyed strolling around, taking in the sights, and of course enjoyed the ice cream. Well worth the visit !