Yesterday Houses 13 and 19, plus Erin, decided it would be fun to walk from St. Andrews to Anstruther, which has "the best chippy in the UK," and on the way stop a place called Dunino Den, which was apparently once a center of some Pagan activity. Dunino is only four miles away, Anstruther about another six after that, so a lot of the day did involve dodging cars on the highway, tramping through muddy fields, and avoiding barbed wire. But, again, what I love about Scotland is that you have
the right to roam. And walking makes food taste better, anyway.
We walked uphill and into a Scottish mist a little after ten, and reached the wooded path into Dunino a little before twelve. So we made good time for nine easily distracted college students gabbing the whole way and stopping to look at livestock and abandoned houses.
There's a lovely Kirk above the den, with properly huge Victorian gravestones in the yard, and a beautifully spartan chapel with a splash of stained glass above the alter. It was quiet and you could see your breath. I normally don't indulge in any Austenalia, but it was exactly the kind of parish church Edward and Elinor
Ferrars might preside over, raising chickens and giving very short sermons. Of course, the vast majority of our walking party were a brutally atheistic bunch, so the atmosphere was perhaps not nearly as romantic as it could have been.
Down the trail, we reached the top of the den itself, a "druid well" on a cleft overlooking a stream, with stairs cut into the rock below. Now, I've only been studying archeology for about four weeks, but the well itself is the only part of the den that looked genuine. The rocks below do contain celtic crosses and pagan symbols, but the work is too precise and unweathered to be from the pre-Christian period. Still, there was a pleasing, peaceful, Neo-pagan vibe to the site, and we all spent some time relaxing under the prayer trees and throwing pennys in the stream. We'd read reports of a wild cat being seen in the area, but the den was really pretty tame overall.
From Dunino it was another two and half hours to Anstruther, and having only eaten a handful of grapes and two nutrigrain bars all day, I was thrilled to get there, let me tell you what. We stopped at a cash point (ATM, in American), and then booked it down to the harbor. Anstruther smells more like the sea than St. Andrews does, but has the same charming stone architecture and colorful doors. It's shopping drag is centered around the harbor and the fisheries museum and the ferry to the Isle of May, which we didn't have the time for, alas. We got to the chippy just in time, though. A huge line started forming behind us and it started drizzling outside.
The fish and chips
were really great. The place wasn't so much a chippy, which is more take-out style, as a proper restaurant, and from the line, and how quickly they moved the line, it's clear that they're doing a very good business. I probably need to try them again when I haven't walked ten miles first to see if they still hold up, but I would say that my haddock in batter with salt and vinegar was the closest thing I've had yet to New Orleans food, and further, I believe they would be enjoyed by New Orleanians who are way more hardcore about seafood than I am. As it was already three-thirty by the time we finished eating, we all took the bus back to St. Andrews, a transit time of about fifteen minutes duration, and got Jennettas, the most delightful ice cream parlor I've been in, maybe ever, before heading back the seemingly much shorter road home to Albany.
Yesterday Houses 13 and 19, plus Erin, decided it would be fun to walk from St. Andrews to Anstruther, which has "the best chippy in the UK," and on the way stop a place called Dunino Den, which was apparently once a center of some Pagan activity. Dunino is only four miles away, Anstruther about another six after that, so a lot of the day did involve dodging cars on the highway, tramping through muddy fields, and avoiding barbed wire. But, again, what I love about Scotland is that you have the right to roam. And walking makes food taste better, anyway. 
We walked uphill and into a Scottish mist a little after ten, and reached the wooded path into Dunino a little before twelve. So we made good time for nine easily distracted college students gabbing the whole way and stopping to look at livestock and abandoned houses. 
There's a lovely Kirk above the den, with properly huge Victorian gravestones in the yard, and a beautifully spartan chapel with a splash of stained glass above the alter. It was quiet and you could see your breath. I normally don't indulge in any Austenalia, but it was exactly the kind of parish church Edward and Elinor Ferrars might preside over, raising chickens and giving very short sermons. Of course, the vast majority of our walking party were a brutally atheistic bunch, so the atmosphere was perhaps not nearly as romantic as it could have been. 
Down the trail, we reached the top of the den itself, a "druid well" on a cleft overlooking a stream, with stairs cut into the rock below. Now, I've only been studying archeology for about four weeks, but the well itself is the only part of the den that looked genuine. The rocks below do contain celtic crosses and pagan symbols, but the work is too precise and unweathered to be from the pre-Christian period. Still, there was a pleasing, peaceful, Neo-pagan vibe to the site, and we all spent some time relaxing under the prayer trees and throwing pennys in the stream. We'd read reports of a wild cat being seen in the area, but the den was really pretty tame overall. 
From Dunino it was another two and half hours to Anstruther, and having only eaten a handful of grapes and two nutrigrain bars all day, I was thrilled to get there, let me tell you what. We stopped at a cash point (ATM, in American), and then booked it down to the harbor. Anstruther smells more like the sea than St. Andrews does, but has the same charming stone architecture and colorful doors. It's shopping drag is centered around the harbor and the fisheries museum and the ferry to the Isle of May, which we didn't have the time for, alas. We got to the chippy just in time, though. A huge line started forming behind us and it started drizzling outside. 
The fish and chips were really great. The place wasn't so much a chippy, which is more take-out style, as a proper restaurant, and from the line, and how quickly they moved the line, it's clear that they're doing a very good business. I probably need to try them again when I haven't walked ten miles first to see if they still hold up, but I would say that my haddock in batter with salt and vinegar was the closest thing I've had yet to New Orleans food, and further, I believe they would be enjoyed by New Orleanians who are way more hardcore about seafood than I am. As it was already three-thirty by the time we finished eating, we all took the bus back to St. Andrews, a transit time of about fifteen minutes duration, and got Jennettas, the most delightful ice cream parlor I've been in, maybe ever, before heading back the seemingly much shorter road home to Albany.
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