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Grade: Moderate coastal walk with road section at end Although this beautiful section of the Fife Coastal Path is beside a river, it doesn’t feel like it. The Tay is so broad here that it seems much more like walking the shore of a lake. The walk offers variety in both the immediate surroundings and the broader vistas, with poignant reminders of man’s influence along the way. Shortly after leaving Wormit there is a striking memorial to the victims of the 1879 Tay Bridge Disaster, when the original rail bridge foundered, casting a train into the freezing December waters. There were no survivors. From the memorial (one of two erected in December 2013 on either side of the Firth) you have a dramatic view of the second bridge, happily still in use.
Alan Visits Balmerino Abbey
I recently visited Balmerino Abbey a few miles from my hometown. I remember first visiting the abbey with my parents when I was a child. To this day, I love nothing more that wandering through the grounds of old abbeys and churches. Even better, too, if the buildings are intact and still in use.
Balmerino Abbey was founded in 1229 by Queen Ermengarde, widow of William I, or, more commonly, William the Lion. In the autumn of said year, a band of twelve Cistercian monks, led by Abbot Alan (coincidence?), arrived on foot from Melrose in the Scottish borders.
St Andrews Castle
Michael Alexander speaks to author Vicki Masters about her inspirations for an historic novel set against the backdrop of the infamous Siege of St Andrews Castle in 1546/47.
When German cleric Martin Luther began protesting against the practices of the Catholic Church which led on to the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the early 16th century, it led Scottish clerics such as John Knox to embrace this new theology and revolt against the Catholic Church in Scotland.
By the 1540s, Cardinal Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews, was the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland and in a bid to stamp out growing revolts, he condemned many to be burnt at the stake after they were tried for heresy.