It seemed to me that in order to reach most of the sections of The Path I was walking, I had to get there by driving down single-track, narrow country roads. These roads are unlit, potholed and treacherous in winter but as the spring and summer arrive, they are just potholed and treacherous. I find that these faults can (almost) be forgiven because they often have stunning views, even though there never seems to be a convenient layby to pull into to enjoy the view.
In the Golden Age of steam railways, these tiny roads were crossed by railways and almost everywhere you drive, you can see the tall walls on either side of the road which used to be the abutments of a railway bridge – provided you can take your eyes off the road for a minute while dodging the potholes. The bridge spans and the rails themselves are long gone, there’s no reason to have a railway bridge where the trains no longer run. John Airey’s “Railway Map of Scotland” was printed in 1875, and his map shows blue and red veins of railway lines running throughout Scotland circulating rich people (as well as goods and post) to otherwise inaccessible places all over the country. Looking at Fife on his map, the lines extend into St Andrews and a branch line wanders down the coast to Anstruther but in our time, those railway veins no longer exist. Driving past abandoned raised embankments and the remains of bridges makes me think about how much nicer it would have been to look at the views gliding past while sitting on a train drinking a large glass of red wine rather than slaloming down single-track roads avoiding potholes the size of small bomb craters.
The reason I bring up this subject is because the section of The Path I was walking today ran along part of the disused railway line near Tayport. This small town used to be more poetically called Ferryport-On-Craig after the ferries which had always run across the water to Broughty Ferry. The passenger ferries had operated since before the 12th century but when the railway companies forged ahead, straight up the country to Aberdeen, the ferries were changed to a Floating Railway and the town name was changed to Tay Port. When I first read about the “Floating Railway”, designed by Thomas Bouch, I couldn’t really understand why it worked. Manoeuvring railway carriages on and off a ship seems like a huge amount of effort but rail ferries were more of a thing back then, a better option than long detours in the years before construction began on the great railway bridges. It turns out that Thomas Bouch should have stuck to designing Floating Railways, rather than bridges, but that’s another story.
My walk was to start in Tayport and as I drove into the town, I found myself getting excited as I saw a sign pointing the way to the Dolphin Centre. Naturally, in such a coastal setting, I presumed this would mean some sort of educational or sightseeing tour or museum about dolphins and I wondered why I had never heard of it before. As I drove past it on the way to the car park, I realised with some disappointment that this was the name of the local community centre. Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been led astray by exciting signage and probably won’t be the last.
I started the walk by setting out along the promenade. On my left was an enormous flat green playing field which had a playpark, but more unusually, there was a small reed bed lying to one side. The visual effect was like looking at a well-groomed, slicked-back hairstyle which had a huge tuft of unruly hair sticking up. The reed bed was popular with ducks, but also with moorhens which were flashing red and yellow beaks through the reeds or wading through the shallower water on bright green bamboo-stick legs. On the right was the Tay, lying beyond the flat, wet beach dotted with high-pitched whistling oystercatchers. I could see Broughty Castle on the other side of the river, but in the middle of the wide river was a tall wooden structure – the old Pile Lighthouse. Squatting in the river since the middle of the 1800’s, it has served it’s time warning and guiding the Floating Railway ships, the whaling boats and the cargo ships as they sailed up and down and side to side across the Tay. Retired and abandoned by humans, it is slowly collapsing with age and exposure but it’s nice to see that before it goes, it has been given a new purpose, becoming home to a colony of cormorants.
The wide, paved promenade didn’t last long, soon it became a narrow gravel path with a flat, unfenced seawall which ran at the back of gardens and houses. This worked out well for me because I’m considering buying a small summerhouse for my back garden and as I peeked over the short walls, it was better than going to a summerhouse showroom. These were gardens with amazing views and, quite rightly, the owners wanted to make the most of their outdoor spaces. There were lots of ideas to choose from; summerhouses, gazebos, garden rooms, conservatories and even a converted shed.
I reached the original small harbour and slipway and, unlike the new harbour with it’s many yacht masts and working slipways, I wasn’t surprised to see the old harbour empty. Once this had been the handling yard, where rail carriages were moved onto ships with the precision of a chess game, but now the old pier was quiet and serenely beautiful, overgrown by grass and the tall pole holding the bell was silent. The only noises were the gently splashing waves and an older gentleman whistling cheerfully while he was gardening at the house with the slipway, which used to be an old warehouse. He was weeding the extremely steep patch of garden which was above the harbour, and rather than try and reach from his steps, he had opted for balancing a ladder precariously above the harbour water on the slippery wet stone and gardening from the ladder. A novel idea, but unlike the summerhouses, this was one idea I wasn’t going to adopt. The fleeting thought that skipped through my mind was that the thin boundary line between bravery and foolhardiness was often blurred.
I left the whistling man behind me and carried on along the path to join the old railway line. It ran quite straight for the rest of the way, paralleling the road and the river all the way to the Tay Road bridge. I wasn’t sure if I’d see much more, the view was pleasant but too close to the road for observing nature and too far away from the beach to see birds, seals or dolphins. I was wrong of course, passing by the two lighthouses designed by Robert Stevenson, famed lighthouse designer and grandfather of the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. Although these lighthouses are not identical twins, they are similar in design except that one of them has been left a derelict shell looking tired, grey and sad; the other has been cared for and is a proud, whitewashed way marker for the few ships and boats that come here.
I reached the end of the walk at the Road bridge and thought about progress and how it changes and moves our landscapes. Raised abandoned railway embankments with robins perched in the trees at their sides, silent harbours with ducks fishing in their calm waters, old wooden lighthouses with cormorants diving from them and decayed wooden pier posts peeking through the sand at the oystercatchers. Perhaps not all changes are for the worse.
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