As The King says in Alice In Wonderland, “Begin at the beginning”. For me, this meant Implementing The Plan. The choices of a starting point are at one end or the other of the Fife Coastal Path (in either Kincardine or Newburgh) and since Kincardine is quite a distance, I decided to start in Newburgh. I’d driven through Newburgh every day for over a year to get to a job in Perth, but had never given it a second thought. To be entirely truthful, I had occasionally reached my destination in Perth and not even remembered driving through Newburgh. Not due to ingesting anything illegal, you understand, just because I’d been driving on autopilot and Newburgh didn’t seem noticeable. That changed when it became my starting point destination.
I drove through the long, thin town and parked in the car park at the top of the hill, just a few short steps from the Fife Coastal Path starting arch (or finishing arch depending on which way you’re walking). For the first time, I was walking alone, but this doesn’t bother me, I like chatting to friendly, elderly people walking their friendly, elderly spaniels. After greeting yet another spaniel and her owner, I started to pay full attention to my surroundings. The view walking down the hill through the park was beautiful, especially in the Spring sunshine. The landscape looked like the layers of an exotic sponge cake, the wide, blue-grey Tay river on the bottom, then the bright yellow of the reed beds, the many greens of the hills beyond the river and the vivid blue sky topped with its own layers of creamy white and wispy grey clouds. Following the gravel path out of the park, it became a short pavement that ran between houses and then, unexpectedly, the river was right in front of me. I could see the largest reed bed in the UK up close and hear the calls of the birds over the background noise of waves slapping against the small piers which jut out into the river. A couple of small boats were moored slightly off-shore and it seemed to me as if this stunning view had appeared out of nowhere and been dropped at my feet.
I had never known that these piers and mini harbours were here, tucked in behind Newburgh, gripping the riverbank. I had certainly never thought about the history of the town. The harbour areas had long ago been used for boatbuilding; to transfer cargo from large ships (which couldn’t make it all the way to Perth) to smaller ships and for importing raw materials for the local linoleum factory. Newburgh hadn’t always been the sleepy town it is today.
The path meandered alongside the river, and I could see a lawned area to my right with a modern metal sculpture that intrigued me. I’m not really someone who appreciates art but the sculpture seems to capture and imprison the speed and power of the silvery Tay salmon as they leap out of the splashing water.
The path continued as a tarmac pavement at the back of the houses then, as I left the houses behind me, it became a rougher gravel path which sometimes seemed to part the reed beds like the Red Sea to allow me to walk through. I took a seat on one of the benches and took some photos of the views and the V-shaped clumps of returning migrating birds. I missed three shots of a reed bunting before I acknowledged defeat, then the increasing wind started blowing the reeds until they looked horizontal, which I took as nature’s hint for me to head back to the car.
Rather than return the same way, I decided to cut back through the town along the main road, past the base of Park hill. I could clearly see the outline of the huge Newburgh Bear dug into the side of the hill, which is kept visible by burning the vegetation on the hillside each year. Despite explanations and reading an article about it, I am still unsure why the emblem of the Earls of Warwick stands proudly on a hillside above a small town in Fife, but it seems to have settled quite well into the neighbourhood and doesn’t seem to cause any trouble to the locals so I’ll leave it be. I have no doubt that my photos of the Bear would have looked much better if I had taken them from above, but since I had unaccountably misplaced both my drone and my helicopter, I decided the shots I had taken would make a nice memory, even if they wouldn’t win any photography competitions.
Back to the road, I almost walked past the ruins of Lindores Abbey because I’d seen them before but then on a whim, I stopped walking and entered through the gateway, one of the original stone archways of the Abbey. The Abbey buildings here are even less preserved than the ones at Balmerino, they look more like an enormous rockery in a garden. They are, however, well-tended and cared for and the result is an atmosphere of calmness and a gentle softening of the stone heaps, unlike Balmerino where much of the stone is exposed. In a recent archaeological dig here, a distillation vat was discovered in the ruins and my imagination pictured monks distilling and drinking whisky to ward off the cold. It requires more effort to imagine the ivy-draped walls as buildings, so it’s much easier and more pleasant (if you like to follow the monks’ example by having a wee nip to keep the wind chill away) to go to the Distillery over the road which shows medieval woodcuts of how the Abbey used to look. The Distillery prides itself on using a resurrected recipe for Aquae Vitae that the original monks used and the resulting drink is pleasant, wind-chill reducing and sold in glass bottles that mimic the shape of the fluted columns originally used in the building of the Abbey. Clever.
Back on the main road, instead of focusing on hurrying through the town, I started to look at the buildings to see what else they could share of the history of Newburgh. Time has not been kind to Newburgh, but it was obvious from the architecture that it had once been a thriving, busy place. The most noticeable building is the Georgian town-house (or town hall) which has a tower complete with spire. Unfortunately it was closed but a quick internet search shows pictures of a large council chamber with a mezzanine gallery and sloping ceiling. A grand building indeed for a small Fife town.
As I continued walking up the hill, the puzzle of Newburgh struck me even more strongly. There are signs of neglect and abandonment, right alongside evidence of pride and care. Cracked, peeling facades next door to beautifully painted, carved stone house-fronts. Window-boxes contain either dead plants in bare soil or glorious, technicolour displays of miniature daffodils and crocus. Permanently closed shops sit almost side-by-side with thriving arts & crafts galleries. The Lindores Masonic Lodge has graceful, arched, panelled windows and the stone carvings and front have recently been painted a beautiful shade of blue, echoing the sky. In comparison, the Laing Library looks top heavy and acts like a plain cousin, set back off the road and almost hiding from passers-by. Older stone-built houses with solid, rectangular windows sit uncomfortably beside more modern houses with tiny PVC window frames unsure and blinking in the sun. Newburgh seems to be a town of contrasts, cascades of multi-coloured plastic wheelie bins squat abandoned on beautiful cobbled pavements outside gaudily-painted, elegant houses. The perfect green square lawn of the bowling club sits next to the war memorial near the top of the hill, the dark statue of the kilted soldier outlined dramatically against the sky. On the opposite side of the road, are a set of twinned turret houses, looking noble but aged with their stained sandstone.
I decided that I like Newburgh and it’s faded grandeur, but I also pity it. It feels like a dog whose Master has left it in the kennel while he went away on holiday. It has a long, proud history of industry and trade, going back to the founding of Lindores Abbey in the 12th century. It also has potential, those beautiful old buildings could live again – if the Master were ever to return from his holidays…
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