The Fabulous East Neuk
“King James VI described the Kingdom of Fife as a ‘beggar’s mantle fringed with gold! Now it’s fringed with golf!”
Crail Harbour is still a busy little port landing lobsters and crabs. Artists proliferate too, capturing the wonderful textures and colours of this most ancient harbour.
King James was singing the praises of the Kingdom’s coastal communities and perhaps ‘dissing’ the rest of the county. I kinda get where he was coming from!
OUTSTANDING GEMS
Trade relations between Scotland and the Low Countries (Holland, Flanders, Belgium) thrived from the 14th century onwards with Scottish ‘clinkers’ sailing from Leith and the coastal villages of Crail, Anstruther & Pittenweem carrying coal, salt, wool and wood. For ballast, they’d load up with pantiles, the distinct red roofing tiles you still see today throughout Fife and East Lothian.
They also brought with them….golf!
KOLFEN
A game called ‘kolf’ or ‘kolfen’ was well established in the Netherlands and Belgium in the 15th century, predominantly a winter sport played on frozen rivers & lakes where they’d strike a puck towards an iron stake. A summer version developed, played on flat pitches adjacent to grand houses or indoors in 15-meter long courts.
Scottish sailors & traders observed the Low Countries sport and decided, “We can do that!” The coastal margins of East Lothian, Fife, Angus, and Aberdeenshire were perfectly suited to a Scottish adaptation of the game. The flat, sandy stretches twixt town and sea were not much good for anything except sheep grazing and rabbit breeding and here the new sport took hold. I find this image most intriguing.
Links golf remains the most natural and exquisite form of the game today.
“In the annals of golf, this protrusion reaching out into the North Sea undoubtedly witnessed the beginning of it all…”
Pick up a fresh lobster for lunch at Crail Harbour
The Village of Crail
Step back in time to some of the old fishing cottages that stand resistant to the waves and wind of Fife’s East Neuk
“My favourite is undoubtedly the village of Crail with its wonderful, picturesque harbour. ”
Fife’s East Neuk is a timeless cluster of ancient fishing villages that remains little changed since the days of those first sailors.
Each has its unique character and charm, reflecting to times when they were thriving seaports. My favourite is undoubtedly the village of Crail with its wonderful, picturesque harbour.
From Crail's wide main street, steep cobble-stoned ‘wynds’ run down to the harbour, this being the oldest part of the village. Landscape painters and photographers spend hours here. The small anchorage caters mainly for lobster and crab fishing boats and creel-markers (floats) are seen in the water all along the coast.
The Golf Hotel is where the original 11 members met in 1786 to create the Crail Golfing Society, including the pub landlord, Mr Daniel Conolly.
Robinson Crusoe
A statue of Robinson Crusoe on the site where Andrew Selkirk’s birth cottage once stood, erected by his relative
Skirting the shores of Largo Bay are three charming hamlets, Upper Largo, Lower Largo and Lundin Links. Lower Largo is probably the best known as the birthplace of Alexander Selkirk, the reputed inspiration for Daniel Defoe's ‘Robinson Crusoe’. A statue of Crusoe looking expectantly out to sea can be found in the village. According to local legend, the man’s manner was so obnoxious his shipmates set him down on a desert island and left him to his fate.
Cardy House, Lower Largo was the home of Selkirk’s present-day relatives, the Jardines when I visited in the ‘90s. Now it seems to be a group of rather disparate flats.
On an East Neuk photographic tour, I met Selkirk’s relative Ivy Jardin, her husband a direct descendant. She and her son had visited the Chilean island of Más a Tierra where, in 1704, the hapless Selkirk had spent 4 years. But there is controversy to this tale and I wonder if this is why the local tourist authority doesn’t make more of it. Some say Selkirk hijacked the story and said it was himself that Defoe had written about when in fact there were, according to more scholarly studies, a number of tales that Defoe had drawn from. I did not raise this with Mrs Jardine at the time as she was so involved in promoting the village and the idea that her relative had indeed inspired the book. She invited me to her home for a cup of tea and what a place that was; a Victorian preserve. She explained she was offering it to the National Trust for Scotland to take over but wasn’t making any headway.
