Ballinbreich Castle is a little off the beaten Fife Coastal Path but I had decided it most definitely deserved a visit and was interesting enough (to me) to be included in The Plan. Partly because it’s not a castle, it’s a ruin, and partly because I’ve always pronounced it wrongly. I’m ok with this because most locals don’t even know it exists, let alone how to pronounce it and I have to restrain myself from telling everyone it’s there and how to pronounce it correctly. To all of my friends who have been kind enough to listen to my wonderings about my wanderings, I’d like to apologise for the “…and it’s actually pronounced Bambreek”. Well it is.
It's also interesting (to me anyway) because of it’s history. It started life in the 14th century as a tower house but by the 16th century it had 3 storeys, a chapel, an iron-plated door, defensive ditches, a garden, was home to Earls (and to the rest of their families one assumes) and provided bed and breakfast for Queens, Kings and Regents as they toured the country. I seriously doubt my 2 bedroomed flat would ever change that much, even given 2 centuries, but that’s not a problem because I don’t have a huge need for a defensive ditch right now. The Master of Rothes who lived here in 1546 was called Norman Leslie – one of the ringleaders of the plot to murder Cardinal David Beaton at St Andrews Castle. They got up to all sorts of mischief back then. The castle was used as a second home (their other home was also a castle) until the late 1700’s, then became derelict. I think you’ll agree this was a decent destination and a worthy detour to add to The Plan.
The walk began in Lindores, at the bottom of the Park Hill and I started the walk by boring two tolerant friends (who were today's walking companions) with my recent research about the Newburgh Bear. For those of you who have read my musings about Lindores in a previous post, you’ll understand the reference. For anyone else, the short version is: why on earth is the emblem of the earls of Warwick (or more correctly the Beaumont family) burned into a hill in Fife? My tolerant friends were probably wishing they had been given the short version too, but there you go. The short answer (which is probably now making my tolerant friends weep) is that in the ruins of Lindores Abbey, a stone was found with the carved image of the Bear. It has been over the door of the Bear Tavern in nearby Newburgh for a number of years, has in recent years been painted and sits proudly between a red plastic Tennants sign and a Belhaven sign (other beers are available). So I’ll leave the Bear alone and move on through the walk.
My friends hadn’t seen the Lindores Abbey ruins, so we went for a look. It feels a little bit naughty going into the ruins because it looks and feels like a private garden. But the gates were open and each of the areas of interest were labelled: “Refectory”, “Night Stair”, “Cellarum” and the stone coffin (complete with a drain for fluids - nice) labelled enigmatically “Black Douglas”. He sounds like someone I might have got on well with if I’d lived back then and yes, he got up to all sorts of mischief too.
This section of the walk started at the back of the distillery and headed through a farm to get to the Path which took us partway through a field and then up the hill towards Higham and Glenduckie. The woods we were walking through struck me as a little strange and it took a few moments to realise why. The wooded area was bare. The trees themselves had clearly not heard the rumours from the rest of Nature that spring had arrived and their branches were still stripped and wrinkled from winter. Around their bases, the ground was naked soil, no mossy softness or feathery ferns, no matting of green grass, just rocks and earth. The path itself was a grassy green border that ran to one side and to the other side of the path were the fertile brown mud fields which had just started sprouting their summer crops.
We reached a gate and passed through into one of the livestock fields and stopped to look at (and take arty photos of) the spectacular view that could be glimpsed through the avenue of gorse bushes. The gorse were trying their best to hide the view using hundreds of bright yellow flowers opening wide in the sunshine, but the view won and the gorse resigned themselves to providing a vaguely coconut smell to enhance the view instead. It was a glorious day and the fields stretched out below us, bright blue sky reflected in the mirror of the Tay which slithered through the reed beds and around the sandbanks from Newburgh to the wide estuary of Dundee. It was breath-taking – like the climb had been. We started hiking further up the hill and round the top of it, following the Path through fields and gates, admiring the view from every possible angle.
It wasn’t long before the castle came into view, down the long steep hillside to our left and I felt a moment’s anxiety. It didn’t look as close to The Path as it had on the maps. I tried to act nonchalant, as you do when you’ve talked two friends into a very long walk when you have no real idea of where you’re going. I tried to convince myself, and them, that we would be able to reach the road and from the road it was just a shortcut through a field to the castle. Yes, that’s what we’d do, it’d be fine. Except it wasn’t. The Path veered away from the road and the castle disappeared from view completely behind a slightly raised mound. We continued walking, through another gate, and then another, past a ruined bothy and through another field and past many more sheep. Still no view of the road or castle. The views were still amazing but although our phones assured us that The Path was running parallel to the road, there was no way to get down to it.
Then we saw the castle again. We were right above it, could see it’s tumbled walls and ruined round gatehouse. The derelict beauty and the history taunted me through my binoculars but there were huge fields and a steeply sloped hillside between us. So close but so far away. I was disappointed but decided that we would head back to the cars and visit the castle another time.
Once again rescued by the preparedness of my friend, she decided that we were going to have a cuppa before heading back. Sat on some grass in a field, leaning back against a rusted iron gate, drinking a hot cup of tea, munching on salty sweet shortbread, listening to nothing but birdsong and the breeze I realised that the truest truism is true. It turns out that life IS a journey, not a destination. Who knew?
Comments