IT HAS taken me a while to get around to writing up the last walk of my April 2024 trip, with several things conspiring to get in the way of so doing, which include amongst their number a subsequent walking trip, but here it is. That day’s walk was a composite of the walk I’d originally planned for that day, plus all the parts of the previous one that I’d abandoned due to fatigue. A good night’s sleep had restored both energy and enthusiasm and I was raring to go.
Aberdour
Railway Station
Since I am not a horse and hence customarily stand upon my hind limbs, my raring was hardly unusual. Certainly, it excited neither comment nor alarm from the few individuals awaiting their train at Aberdour railway station. The only horse they cared to see was of the iron kind, as introduced to Aberdour when the North British Railway (NBR) opened its line in 1890.
Well, maybe not exactly as introduced in 1890; Scotrail’s current Fife Circle Line service uses modern diesel electric trains, whereas the NBR’s trains were powered by steam.
Main Street
The coffee may have helped stimulate my body into action but my brain was somehow still half asleep, as evidenced by my somehow turning right instead of left and setting off in entirely the wrong direction along Main Street.
Fortunately, Aberdour was ready with a pretty big clue to my stupidity, in the form of Aberdour Castle. This should have been firmly behind me and not, for instance on my right. Thus, when I spotted it, I was a little surprised.
The Purple Shop
After a moment or two of caffeine-induced anxiety, relative sanity prevailed and I realised that I was about to walk back to Kirkcaldy instead. I popped into a handy shop to buy some chocolate, partly to console myself over my error and partly to kid myself that I had meant to come this way and visit this shop all along. I mean, it was called The Purple Shop, and that is by far my favourite colour. Yup this was totally deliberate. Yeah, right.
Upon exiting The Purple Shop, I looped back past the castle to the station, using the same path as last time, because why not?
Woodside Hotel
Turning left and heading the correct direction down Main Street carried me past several other shops including a Post Office and a couple of hotels. One of the latter was the Woodside Hotel, the main building of which was built in 1873, replacing what had been the Bell Inn. Its Historic Environment Scotland entry notes that it was built for the ‘Greig Brothers’ but a little research reveals that publican Alexander Greig (1839-1892) had already lost most of his siblings by the time he had it constructed. He had been landlord of the Bell Inn, which he had inherited from his parents Robert Greig (1786-1849), originally a shoemaker, and innkeeper’s daughter Ann Bell (1796-1866).
The entry also indicates that he was the great-grandson of noted Russian Navy admiral Samuel Greig (1735-1788). I found nothing to prove nor disprove this but it is certainly plausible, though, if he was, he hadn’t quite hit the level of prosperity and social status of his distant cousins who had married into Russian nobility. On the other hand, Alexander built himself a hotel, so he was hardly doing badly.
Unfortunately, its most recent owners – John and Lis McTaggart, who acquired it in 2017 – have found that having one of those is a problematic situation. Their predecessors had already downsized it in 2014, converting two of the three neighbouring properties that it had absorbed in the mid-20th-century back into houses, but last year – having suffered the successive blows of austerity, pandemic and the rise of Airbnb – they took the unhappy decision to close down. Planning permission has been given to convert the rest into housing and, just a month before I walked past its locked door, they had held a viewing to auction off its furniture and fittings.
Samuel Greig
Vice-Admiral Samuel Greig, Alexander’s purported great-grandfather, didn’t come from Aberdour but from Inverkeithing, which I’d get to later that morning. Initially a merchant seaman, he joined the Royal Navy in 1758 as an experienced master’s mate and was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1761 and saw action in several battles of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). At that war’s conclusion, when the Russian Empire was trying to build up its navy, it asked to acquire some skilled officers from Britain and Samuel was one of those sent.
Samuel was quickly promoted and distinguished himself against the Ottoman Empire in the 1770 Battle of Chesma. He achieved a much more inconclusive result against Sweden in the 1788 Battle of Hogland, after which both sides were wracked with fever, of which he then died. His descendants included various important Russian admirals, generals, ministers and diplomats in addition to the previously-mentioned owner of a small Fife hotel.
The arms used by Samuel’s Russian descendants displayed three gold right hands upon a blue field. Greig arms had often included three right hands, though more often in silver on red with various bordures for difference. As a family, the Greigs were a branch of Clan Gregor but had changed their name just
enough to sidestep a 1603 edict of James VI that abolished the name MacGregor and forced those who bore it to renounce it on pain of death.
Dovecot Park
Had I needed to visit the Woodside Hotel it would not have been the first one to shut down before I got there but, fortunately, I had no such need. My next waypoint was, in fact, directly opposite, and took the form of an old estate gateway leading to a street called Dovecot Park.
Downans Plantation
This was, in former times, part of the extensive Donibristle Estate, which belonged to the Earl of Moray. I would be following his long, but now well-surfaced driveway, as it veered off from Dovecot Park and clipped the edge of the Downans Plantation and bypassed St Colme House (built circa 1845 to house the earl’s factor).
The lie of the land actually meant I had quite a good view from much of the driveway.
Dalgety Bay
Beech Avenue
The driveway, now called ‘Beech Avenue,’ had been making a bee-line for what was once literally Dalgety Gardens (i.e. a formally laid-out garden) but now retains only the name for part of a housing estate. But it turned into a narrow connecting footpath at the edge of the settlement of Dalgety Bay and the Fife Coastal Path, which I had been following, eschewed it in favour of turning hard left and heading straight back to the coast.
St Bridget’s Kirk
In addition to returning closer to the waterline, this hard left turn had brought me to the ruins of St Bridget’s Kirk, which the coastal path planners doubtless thought would be more interesting than where some gardens weren’t. And it was.
The church was originally built before 1178 and was subordinated to nearby Inchcolm Priory. This had been founded as an Augustinian priory in the mid-12th century and was upgraded to full abbey status in 1235. It remained in control of St Bridget’s, which served as Dalgety’s parish church, until 1569, when the Scottish Reformation swept it away.
Thereafter, the church was significantly altered but remained in use until 1830 when its congregation, who mostly lived and worked in the mining village of Fordell, about 3 miles to the north, finally built themselves a church closer to hand. Technically, the church isn’t completely disused, as an open-air service is still held at every June.
Donibristle Stables
From St Bridget’s, the Fife Coastal Path continued as a delightfully leafy footpath that edged its way around the western end of Dalgety Bay (the embayment, not the settlement) and through the trees of the Ross Plantation. This came to an end pretty much when the bay did, as the path slipped past Dalgety Bay Sailing Club and joined the street known as The Wynd.
Facing onto the Wynd was the old stable block of Donibristle House. This was built in the early 18th century, probably to a design by Alexander McGill (d. 1734), who designed the other estate buildings erected at the time. It was converted into housing in the late 1980s by Muir Homes (est. 1973).
Anger & Equicide
A shocking lack of stability was shown here by John Stuart (1797–1867) in 1831.
The second son of Francis Stuart, 10th Earl of Moray (1771–1848), John was marrying a daughter of the Earl of Elgin – or so he thought – and had commissioned a new stylish black travelling coach for the Grand Tour of Europe that was to be their honeymoon. At the eleventh hour, his bride called the whole thing off and John was heartbroken and enraged. He went to the stables and shot all the horses then ordered the carriage be removed from sight and never be used. Not that it easily could, without any horses.
John became the 12th Earl of Moray in 1859 but never married, passing the title to his half-brother Archibald Stuart (1810–1872). The carriage remained in its sombre seclusion until 1951, when it was donated to Maidstone Carriage Museum.
Donibristle Bay
The next minor headland had once been the Old Harbour for the Donibristle Estate (as opposed to the New Harbour, where the sailing club is now). On its far side was Donibristle Bay.
Donibristle House
The original Donibristle House was the 12th century residence of the Abbot of Inchcolm.
In 1547, James V made his distant relative James Stewart of Beith (d.1547) the commendator of the abbey – i.e. responsible for administering its property – who then took possession of the house. Then, in 1582, a marriage between their grandchildren brought the house into long association with the Earldom of Moray. It also brought fiery destruction since the groom of that couple – James Stewart (1565-1592), 2nd Earl of Moray – got himself murdered by George Gordon (1562-1636), 6th Earl of Huntly, who then set the house ablaze. Because why not?
Their descendants used arms that quartered a version of the Royal Arms of Scotland with a blue and white bordure, representing their descent through a illegitimate son of James V. The second quarter was the chequered fess of the Stuarts and the third bore the arms of the Randolph family, who had been the original Earls of Moray. The latter arms were included to signify possession of the earldom, not descent.
The house was refurbished by James Stuart (c. 1611-1653), 4th Earl of Moray between 1632 and 1653, and then completely rebuilt by Charles Stuart (c. 1660-1735), the 6th earl circa 1701. It was he who employed Alexander McGill to design the stables, along with two wings to the main house in 1720 and a mortuary chapel in 1731. The two wings still stand but the main house caught fire in 1858 and its shell was demolished in 1912; nothing now remains of it.
Donibristle Chapel
Actually, the current house is no spectral apparition but was erected by Muir Homes in the 1980s, while they were converting the stables. The estate had been used as a naval airfield in WW1 and remained in Royal Navy hands until 1962, when it was sold off for development, prompting the growth of the Dalgety Bay settlement and the repurposing of the old estate buildings. Well, most of them…
Going Astray
The chapel had been a very slight detour off the coastal path but one from which I initially failed to return, pressing on instead along entirely the wrong footpath. I realised my mistake when it crossed Moray Way, which was obviously a main road looping through the housing developments of Dalgety Bay. Rather than retrace my steps, I headed west, confident that I would soon find a turning that would reunite me with the coast path, and so it proved.
This meant that I’d swapped the wooded paths of Bathing House Wood and Hopeward Wood for a suburban ring road, which wasn’t ideal, but at least it provided a nice contrast to make me appreciate the coast path all the more when I regained it.
St David’s Harbour
Partly on streets and partly on footpaths, the coastal path first rounded Hopeward Point and then conveyed me to St David’s Harbour. This was constructed in 1752 to ship coal mined in Fordell and carried to the coast by a horse-drawn, wooden-railed industrial tramway. This converted to a steam railway in the 1860s but closed in 1946. Some of its track bed still remains as footpaths.
The harbour itself has suffered a similar fate, with part being infilled in the 1990s for yet more housing development as Harbour Place. There, a handy signpost set my expectations for the next part of the walk.
Harbour Leading Mark
I decided to risk incurring the wrath of the authorities by taking neither child nor bicycle hat with me as I crossed the infilled harbour and followed the path around the edge of Inverkeithing Bay.
On the way, I passed a vaguely Dalek-like cairn that had been built as a leading mark to aid navigation into St David’s Harbour. With the coal traffic now a thing of the past and it harbour half-gone, the daymark had long since ceased to have any real purpose.
Inverkeithing
Prestonhill Quarry
The path rounded the lower flank of the 35 m Preston Hill and arrived at a short concrete pier that once served nearby Prestonhill Quarry, which was active between 1896 and 1980, extracting dolerite.
A rectangular framework at the end of the pier stub – some remnant of its old industrial fittings – framed a view of the Forth Bridge further upstream. Built in 1890, the bridge was the quarry’s contemporary but has outlasted it by over four decades and remains in use today.
The disused quarry is now flooded to a depth of eleven metres and popular for fishing, diving, kayaking and the like despite exacting a slow but steady toll in accidental deaths. Proposals to redevelop it as a housing site have been mooted but this would involve draining and filling the quarry void, which idea is extremely unpopular with the locals.
East Ness
A short distance further on, I came to another industrial pier, though this one was very much still in use. This was East Ness Pier, as opposed to West Ness, which is actually almost directly due south of it. Their names make more sense if you ignore the undulation of the coastline and straighten it out. I mean, I was heading westwards from the east, so it makes sense that I encountered East Ness First. I think.
Mercat Cross
At East Ness, the coastal path connected with the public road network and this carried me past Ballast Bank Park, across the Keithing Burn and into the heart of Inverkeithing. There, I found its 1770 Town House completely concealed by scaffolding but paused to inspect the town Mercat Cross.
This was erected in 1398, though its splendid unicorn finial was not added until 1688. The latter was carved by John Boyd, a mason from South Queensferry, to secure his admission to the Inverkeithing Trades Guildry.
The cross’s stepped base is another later addition, dating from 1974, when it moved to its current position, its third within a roughly 50 m circle right in the heart of the town.
Hospitium of the Grey Friars
One of the reasons I had barely given the Town House a glance was because I was drawn inexorably towards a different building, one that sought to lure me in with its aura of hospitality. This was the 13th century Hospitium of the Grey Friars, essentially a hostel for pilgrims. It was attached to a Franciscan friary that was founded circa 1268, possibly by Sir Philip Mowbray of Barnbougle, which castle I would be passing later.
Now used as a community centre, the hospitium is just one part of what had been a much larger friary complex, the rest being used as a quarry for its stones following the Reformation. Somehow, the hospitium survived.
Hope Street
I continued south down the High Street and it transformed into Hope Street, before passing under a railway bridge, which carried the Edinburgh-Aberdeen line on its approach to the Forth Bridge.
Rosyth Dockyard Branch Line
About a quarter mile further on, the rail line crossed the road again via the Jamestown Viaduct but I would not be passing beneath it just yet. To my left, an opportunity to pass beneath a different railway line beckoned, with the outlying hamlet of Jamestown beyond it.
Originally, this had been the 1877 Inverkeithing & North Queensferry Branch, connecting Inverkeithing to the Queen’s Ferry for which North Queensferry was named, but that became redundant when the Forth Bridge opened in 1890.
Part of it gained new purpose in 1915, though, when Rosyth Dockyard was constructed and the rail branch to it reused part of the alignment.
While the dockyard line is still extant, it hasn’t seen a train in almost a decade. This had been set to change this year with the planned resumption of the Rosyth-Zeebrugge Ferry and re-establishment of an associated trail link, but that project is now on hold indefinitely for want of government funding.
Robertson Metals Recycling
The very 1930s-looking factory building shown above belongs to Robertson Metals Recycling Ltd, which was established at the end of WW1 to mainly recycle old warships, though it has also broken up merchant vessels including the Blue Riband-winning ocean liner RMS Mauretania, which served Cunard from 1906 to 1935.
The recycling plant occupies the Jamestown site of Cruicks Pottery and Terracotta Works, which operated there briefly from about 1892 to 1906 when its owners, the Inverkeithing Fire Clay & Brick Co (est. 1837) went bust. The company, which had been expanding, relocated its brick-making operations from another site in the northern end of Inverkeithing and built themselves a four-storey brickworks of which there is now no sign.
Something else of which there is no sign today is an industrial tramway that served the site, connecting to the Inverkeithing & North Queensferry Line.
West Ness
The coast path had diverted off Cruickness Road – which is saved from the Curse of Cruicks by its different post-k consonant – just after the recycling plant but met it again at West Ness. Here there were picnic benches and a view across the water to both Prestonhill and Dalgety Bay.
Patriotic Petals
Cruickness Road ended at a cottage, becoming a leafy path towards Port Laing as it skirted Cruicks Quarry. Nestling in the shade of the trees were various spring flowers, blooming patriotically in Scottish white and blue:
Based on their shape and intensity of colour, the bluebells were probably hybrids between the Spanish bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and the common bluebell (H. non-scripta). Despite its name, the common bluebell is probably less common than the hybrid version, these days. Since this makes them half-Spanish, does that diminish their Scottish patriotic fervour, I wonder?
North Queensferry
Ferryhills Golf Course
Looking at old Ordnance Survey maps, I see that amongst the things since eaten by Cruicks Quarry is a golf course, which discovery amuses me immensely. The course in question belonged to the Dunfermline Golf Club (est. 1887), which moved to this Ferryhills site in 1890 and remained there until 1929, using Cruicks as their clubhouse until forced out by the imminent encroachment of the quarry.
Port Laing
Even had it still been there, I wouldn’t have seen the golf course from my position by the shoreline, surrounded by trees. And its site was already behind me when I emerged from their leafy shade to skirt the sandy bay of Port Laing. This had been quite undeveloped in the golf club’s early days but hosted a Royal Navy air station from 1912 to 1917, with three sheds, each housing a single seaplane.
Today, three houses overlook the beach, the result of more recent development. Below one of them, beside the path, is a plaque erected in 2016 to mark the centenary of the death of George Paton (1895-1916), a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
Born in Buenos Aires to a Scots emigrant father, Lt Paton was conducting training exercises amid WW1 when a badly-thrown hand grenade landed too close to his men. He shouted a warning to his soldiers to keep back, then dashed forward to try to throw it further away. With fatally bad timing, it exploded just as he reached it, but his body protected his men from the blast. He was buried in Inverkeithing’s Hope Street Cemetery.
Carlingnose Point
Although technically the three houses at the end of Port Laing Wynd were my first encounter with the village of North Queensferry, the Fife Coastal Path wasn’t quite ready for me to take to its streets. Instead, it looped around Carlingnose Point, treating me to yet more leafiness and flowering flora. Then, suddenly, I emerged into a clearing to be treated instead to a splash of bright yellow and the coconut-like aroma of gorse.
Towering over the prickles of the gorse were the rocky cliffs left behind by Carlingnose Quarry. This was yet another dolerite quarry and operated from the late 18th century until the early 20th. Long disused, it makes a dramatic backdrop for the coast path.
Forth Bridge Approach Viaduct
Signs that my tentative interaction with North Queensferry would become imminently more substantial began when the path, which was now the old quarry access track, suddenly became surfaced with some fairly recent-looking setts. This improved footway then rapidly lost height – I had gradually gained about 25 m since Port Laing – while passing beneath the northern approach viaduct of the Forth Bridge.
Fortunately, engineers Sir John Fowler (1817-1898) and Sir Benjamin Baker (1840-1907) knew what they were doing when they designed it and the viaduct failed to collapse on my head and squash me like a bug. Thus, I survived to the end of the quarry track, where it spat me out onto North Queensferry’s Main Street.
The Queen’s Ferry
Ambling south along Main Street, I soon espied Rankin’s Café (est. 2012) and my rumbling stomach insisted that I stop there and refuel. Over tea and cake I considered the history of this little Fife village, which is named for a ferry established in the 11th century by Margaret of Wessex (c.1045-1093), queen to Malcolm III (c.1031-1093).
Born in exile in Hungary, Margaret was a member of the English House of Cerdic and grand-niece to Edward the Confessor (c.1003-1066). She fled north in 1066 after the Norman Conquest of England and married Malcolm in 1070.
Her ferry, which was established for the benefit of pilgrims heading to St Andrews, persisted down the centuries, outlasting the pilgrimages (which ended with the Scottish Reformation) and surviving the building of the Forth Bridge. It could not survive the Forth Road Bridge, though; when that was erected in 1964, the 900-year old ferry service ceased.
Battery Road
I emerged refuelled and refreshed a short while later and, though well aware that I was six decades too late for the way forward to involve going south, I went south anyway. This soon brought me to the corner of Battery Road, where the shuttered and empty Albert Hotel helped frame an awesome view of the Forth Bridge.
Albert Hotel
Opened in 1824 on the site of the former Hope Tavern (which had itself flourished in the mid-18th century), the hotel was initially called Mitchell’s Inn after its owner, Robert Mitchell. It was renamed to the Albert Hotel in honour of a visit to North Queensferry by Queen Victoria & Prince Albert in 1842, which certainly made for better public relations than the conviction for assault that his son, Robert Mitchell Jr had received seven months previously for assaulting a postman.
In its latter days, the Albert Hotel could boast the author Iain Banks (1954-2013) amongst the regulars at its bar.
The hotel closed its doors in 2017 and planning permission to turn it into flats was rejected in 2022, after the council received no less than 133 letters of objection. The community is currently attempting to buy it through the Community Right to Buy provision of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016. With its closure, the number of hostelries in North Queensferry was reduced to just one – the Ferrybridge Hotel – where it could once boast a baker’s dozen!
Town Pier
My southward journey was halted at the Town Pier on account of what had once been the busiest ferry in Scotland not having run in sixty years.
In its heyday, however, the ferry’s heavy use prompted the government to compulsorily purchase it in 1810 and to commission the eminent engineer John Rennie (1761-1821) to rebuild its pier. He completed his works in 1813, which included a guiding light, the design of which Rennie subcontracted to lighthouse designer Robert Stevenson (1772-1850).
Fifteen years later, the advent of steamboats required that the pier be extended for their use. Rennie had died in 1821, so this time it was another giant of Scottish civil engineering, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), who handled the task.
Hope View
If I wanted to get any further, I now needed to go in search of that bridge. This involved retracing my steps back up Main Street and then following it around until it became Hope View. The ‘hope’ it was viewing was St Margaret’s Hope, this being the bay where Queen Margaret was said to have alighted from her boat upon arrival from England.
Forth Road Bridge
As it turned out, there were steps up from the road. The next conundrum was which side to ascend on, east or west?
At 2.5 km in length, the Forth Road Bridge was constructed by a consortium of various companies but didn’t quite live up to the longevity of the ferry, having been largely replaced by the newer Queensferry Crossing in 2017, which carries the M90 motorway.
The Forth Road bridge still carries pedestrians and cyclists but its motor traffic is restricted to public transport, including a trial of driverless buses that, for legal reasons, must still have a ‘driver’ watching the bus drive itself.
South Queensferry
South Queensferry Tolbooth
At the southern end of the Forth Road Bridge, a ramp led me down and under the bridge, where a footpath connected me to Hopetoun Road, which then led me to the coast. I was now in South Queensferry, also simply called Queensferry or, even shorter, ‘the Ferry.’ A larger settlement than North Queensferry, South Queensferry had royal burgh status from 1627 until 1975, when local government reforms abolished the burghs.
In 1630, the burgh built itself a tolbooth, this being dead handy for the subsequent incarceration of seven women pending trial for witchcraft. The structure included a first floor assembly room, which became the headquarters of the burgh council.
A lengthy series of alterations and remodelling kicked off in 1720 when local MP Henry Cunningham (c. 1678-1736) paid to have a four-stage tower and steeple added to the front of the building. An octagonal belfry was added to this in 1807 and clock faces added in 1888 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Finally, a memorial hall with a Venetian window was added in 1893.
Miramare
In my journey up the High Street I acquired an excellent ice cream. I was delightedly devouring this as I passed the High Street’s final seaward building, which is now the Miramare restaurant but was built in 1870 as the Seals Craig Hotel.
It sits right on the old eastern boundary of Queensferry, making it one of the first buildings seen by anyone travelling west from Edinburgh, which probably helped with trade in its hotel days.
Hawes Pier
The ice cream I’d bought had been fairly enormous and so kept me company all the way down what was now Newhalls Road as far as Hawes Pier.
This was known as Newhalls Pier when first built in 1813, and was the southern end of the Queen’s Ferry crossing. As such, it had received the same upgrade works as the northern end, with the pier rebuilt by John Rennie and a guiding light by Robert Stevenson.
Sadly, the lighthouse is now sandwiched between other buildings and thus hard to spot. The pier is now used by leisure boats and the RNLI, hosting one of the latter’s busiest inshore lifeboat stations.
Hawes Inn
Close to the pier is the Hawes Inn, a late 17th-century coaching inn that has now lent its name to the pier.
There, Robert Stevenson’s grandson, the author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), was staying in room number 13 of the inn when he started the novel Kidnapped (publ. 1893). He included the inn within the plot of the book, making it there that the kidnapping of the protagonist, David Balfour, is arranged to deny him his inheritance.
Dalmeny Estate
Whitehouse Bay
Newhalls Road had been the B924 and quite busy but, right under the Forth Bridge’s southern approach viaduct (another 200-tonner), I branched off onto a narrow coast road, Longcraig Road. This made for a much quieter walk as I ambled along above the shoreline, soon coming to Longcraig Pier and a small gatehouse cottage – Longcraig Gate – beside Whitehouse Bay.
There, I passed through the gate and into the grounds of the Dalmeny Estate, through which I would be walking for the next five miles or so.
But first, I paused to sit upon a bench and talk to two other walkers. Specifically a very elderly gent out for a constitutional shuffle in order to keep everything moving, and a woman who was rather keener on walking than her dog was, which had clearly had more than enough.
Hound Point
The surfaced road had ended at Longcraig Gate, but the way onward was a broad estate track that still made for easy going. This was, from the outset, a leafy, wooded walk, of which I was glad. I love a woodland walk every bit as much as a coastal one, and a walk that’s both is just perfect.
I was as a happy as a happy thing, despite being tired and footsore, as I plodded ever onward, past Whitehouse Point and Peatdraught Bay to round Hound Point, where the incoming tide was making temporary islets out of very slight rises on the beach.
Fishery Cottage
Now heading southeast, the estate road conveyed me past Fishery Cottage, a secluded cottage dating back to around the time of the 1856 Ordnance Survey 1st edition maps. Salmon nets were set up at this point until the 1950s, giving the cottage its name.
Just south of Fishery Cottage, a break in the trees gave me a glimpse of beaches, now almost swallowed by the tide. At low tide, these Drum Sands stretch out over a mile in places.
Barnbougle Castle
About three quarters of a mile on from Fishery Cottage, I found myself passing Barnbougle Castle. Originally built as a 13th-century tower house, this was the home of the Mowbrays, who were lords of both Dalmeny and Inverkeithing. Sir Philip Mowbray, you may recall, was the founder of Inverkeithing Friary.
In 1615, the Mowbrays sold Barnbougle to lawyer Sir Thomas Hamilton (1563-1637), who was then titled Lord Binning but later became the Earl of Haddington. His grandson sold it again in 1662, this time to Sir Archibald Primrose of Carrington (1616-1617), a senior judge. Sir Archibald’s son, Archibald Primrose (1664-1723) was created Earl of Rosebery in 1703 and Dalmeny has been the seat of the earls ever since. They don’t live in Barnbougle castle, though , having built Dalmeny House to replace it in 1817.
Thereafter, Barnbougle Castle was used to store explosives until it was destroyed in exactly the sort of accident that that might lead you to expect. Its ruinous shell was rebuilt in 1881, creating the tower house that stands today, which remains Rosebery property, as part of the Dalmeny Estate.
Dalmeny House
Shortly after Barnbougle Castle, the estate road broke free of the trees and traversed a lawn in front of Dalmeny House, the seat of the Earls of Rosebery since 1817. It was designed by English architect William Wilkins (1778-1839), who also designed the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and was designed in the English Tudor Gothic style.
Cramond Ferry
The cryptic state of Dalmeny House was annoying because there had been an option to take a path closer to the shoreline and getting a picture of Dalmeny House had been one reason to stick with the cycle route on the main estate roads instead of veering off and following the footpath. Still, I was on the cycle route now and I knew the two would reunite soon enough.
They did so not far from Cobble Cottage from which a small ferry used to run across the River Almond. This was suspended in 2000 due to a foot-and-mouth outbreak, and never reinstated because its jetty was found to be unsafe. Attempts to replace it with a footbridge were resisted by the Earl of Rosebery, who variously listed litter, fires, dogs, motor cyclists and violent youths as the focus of his objections. He is apparently happy to see the ferry resume, provided that he’s not the one paying for it.
The upshot of this was that there was still no Cramond Ferry, which meant that instead of cutting across the river mouth to Cramond Foreshore, I’d be crossing on the nearest bridge, which was just over a mile upstream.
Cramond
Cramond Old Brig
The mile or so upstream took me past the estate cottages of East Craigie and then out of the Dalmeny Estate. At the very last part, just before exiting the estate, I was overtaken by Reluctant Dog Lady, whose pet had not only found the energy to do some more walking but had also gone fast enough to catch up with me in the process.
I found myself on what had been ‘the old road’ even as far back as 1823, when Cramond New Bridge was built slightly further upstream. That bridge, which had been designed by John Rennie just prior to his death, was replaced in 1964 with a modern concrete affair to better carry the motor traffic of the A90.
But I would be using Cramond Old Brig, which dated back to 1488 (albeit with a partial rebuild in 1619 and repairs in 1687, 1761, 1776 and 1854). While this has never carried the A90, it used to carry vehicular traffic as a back road. Since 1986, though, only cyclists and pedestrians may cross it.
County Boundary
The River Almond marked the old border between Linlithgowshire and Edinburghshire (known as West Lothian and Midlothian respectively after 1925, referencing the early mediaeval province of Lothian).
Today, the City of Edinburgh council area has expanded to include everything as far west as South Queensferry, but I always love to acknowledge these old boundaries.
Dowie’s Mill
A short spur of road – Dowie’s Mill Lane – led downstream to a weir and the site of the long-demolished Dowie’s Mill. This was a grain mill in 1697 but in 1781 it became a sawmill, making handles for the iron spades produced by William Cadell (1737–1819) in his Cramond Iron Works. The works comprised four converted mills below Cramond Old Brig, namely Dowie’s, Peggie’s, Fairafar and Cockle Mills.
The handle-making ceased in 1865 when the Cadell family closed their business, but the sawmill continued with more general work until 1916, when its then owner, furniture-maker John Weller, emigrated, taking its equipment with him.
Its wheel having been destroyed in a flood in in 1935, the mill was occupied by a scrap metal dealer in its last years.
River Almond Walkway
The road ended at the Dowie’s Mill cottages, but a footpath continued – the River Almond Walkway. This was a well-made earthen path with the river gurgling alongside.
The walkway conveyed me past the site of Peggie’s Mill, which had been part of Cadell’s iron works. In a strange turn of fate, it was occupied by John Weller between 1922 and 1934, his emigration having failed to work out. Upon his return, he found that he couldn’t initially reacquire his old premises at Dowie’s Mill.
Salvesen Steps
Past the site of Peggie’s Mill, an old quarry and cliff face would have blocked onward progress were it not for the Salvesen Steps. The gift of shipping and whaling tycoon Keith Salvesen (1897-1970), the steps were constructed in 1966 and plugged an otherwise annoying gap in the riverside path.
More or less opposite the steps was Craigie Quarry, which was opened by the Dalmeny Estate in the early days of Rosebery ownership and used a cantilevered carriageway suspended over the river to transport its stone to Craigie Quarry Docks downstream. The holes for some of the cantilevers can still be seen in cliffs on the Dalmeny side as the Almond runs through its rocky gorge.
Cramond Falls
A little further downstream, I came to Cramond Falls, which is the tourist-friendly name now given to a weir built in 1790 to serve Fair-a-Far Mill. Its fall is about three metres.
Originally a meal mill, dating back to at least 1676, Fair-a-Far Mill became the foundry at the heart of Cadell’s iron empire in 1770, manufacturing tools, chains and axles from steel strips rolled out at Cockle Mill using raw iron imported from Russia and Sweden. A tramway linking the two mills transported the steel.
A combination of chronic mismanagement and occasional flash floods helped contribute to the demise of Cramond’s industry, as did the rise of a rival ironworks at Carron, near Falkirk, which was also part-owned by the Cadells. Today, only a ruin remains of Fair-a-Far Mill, but that’s still more than is left of its three companion mills.
Cramond Village
The River Almond Walkway briefly merged with a public roadway in the vicinity of where Cockle Mill once was, and then reverted to pedestrian footpath for a short stretch before finally emerging onto a quayside at the mouth of the river.
Here several establishments tempted me with the lure of food and drink, including Cramond Bistro and the Cramond Inn, the latter an 18th-century coaching inn. I feared, however, that if I sat down to eat and drink now, I’d never find the willpower to get up and complete my walk without taking a bus or something. And so, I pressed on…
Cramond Island
Immediately north of these establishments was Cramond Foreshore – a scrubby stretch of flat duneland shading into the beach. I’m told that the sands are extensive at low tide, but I got there at high tide when they were all underwater.
This also meant that the causeway to Cramond Island was impassable and that was mildly frustrating. There’s not much to see on the island, which is part of the Dalmeny Estate but now, because I couldn’t get there, I wished to see what little there was all the more.
Roman Fort
Cramond Foreshore was the site of a Roman fort built in 140 during the construction of the Antonine Wall, but it was only in use for 30 years before the Romans retreated to Hadrian’s Wall in 170.
It was reoccupied in 208 during a new Roman invasion led by the Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus (145-211), but Caledonia made him ill and he retreated to York and died there. The fort was the taken over by locals, who used it into the 5th century.
It is thought it might be the ‘Rumabo’ listed in the 7th-century Ravenna Cosmography.
Cramond Tower
The other thing of note on the foreshore was Cramond Tower, which was built in the 15th century and served as a summer house for the Bishop of Dunkeld.
In 1622, after the Reformation, it became the property of Edinburgh merchant James Inglis (d. 1637), who had it made into a more comfortable residence. His family then occupied it for about sixty years until his son John Inglis (d. 1686) built nearby Cramond House in 1680, into which moved his son, Sir James Inglis (1660–1688).
The tower then lay mouldering and abandoned for the next three centuries until it was finally refurbished as a private home in 1981.
Sir James was the first of the Inglis baronets of Cramond, who bore the arms illustrated. These display a lion salient, i.e., one with its hind legs together on the ground and its forelegs together in the air, as if pouncing. The lion is silver on a blue field, with three blue mullets (stars) on a gold chief above.
Edinburgh
Silverknowes Espalanade
Connecting to Cramond Foreshore was a broad, surfaced promenade, this being the western end of Silverknowes Esplanade. After one last, lingering look back towards the bistro and inn, I set off along this, knowing it would take me into Edinburgh proper. Not that you could necessarily tell that from the promenade, there was quite a lot of green space between me and the conurbation at the start. Some of this was park-like and some of it golf courses, but I couldn’t really see the latter, so I didn’t mind.
After about three quarters of a mile, I passed Lauriston Castle, which is a 16th-century tower house used by the City of Edinburgh to host the Lord Provost‘s annual garden party. However the castle was half a mile inland and screened by trees, so I never so much as caught a glimpse of it.
What I could see was a café – the Boardwalk Beach Club – and that was very tempting but, again, I figured I’d better see this walk through to the end before daring to stop for food.
Granton Point
Almost before I knew it, I was approaching Granton Point, where my dalliance with the esplanade would naturally draw to an end.
The end, when it came, was rather jarring. Suddenly, where there had been green space, there were now industrial units on my right hand side, popping into existence as if from nowhere.
Granton Lighthouse
The esplanade met with a road, spitting me out into what was certainly felt like an industrial estate. I headed east along West Shore Road and then into West Harbour Road, where I was confronted by something else that seemed to have wandered inland off the shoreline.
Granton Lighthouse is a real lighthouse of sorts, and it’s always been hidden away on an Edinburgensian backstreet. It was erected in 1869 to serve as a storage and testing facility for the engineers of the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB). The lighthouse tower was included as a testbed facility so that they could fit and test equipment without having to take it out to an actual, navigational lighthouse. It could also be used to safely train employees.
The NLB sold Granton Lighthouse in 2001, when it relocated its engineering operations to Oban. It has since been converted into commercial units, which include a recording studio.
Granton Harbour
Just as West Harbour Road was starting to feel like an endless expanse of post-industrial premises, it turned into Lower Granton Road and took me past the ‘west harbour’ that it had been aiming for.
Granton Harbour first opened in 1838 and provided an important link to Fife in the form of a ferry to Burntisland. In 1881, this became one end of the world’s first Ro-Ro train ferry service.
Q-Ships
Although the Forth Bridge’s opening in 1890 severely reduced its importance, during WW1 the harbour got to host some vessels far more interesting than ferries, namely Q-Ships.
These were merchantmen and trawlers fitted with all manner of hidden weapons that would swan about making ideal targets of themselves for U-boat attack. Since submarines of the day had limited submersible capability and torpedoes were really expensive, a U-boat would prefer to take out an unarmed merchant ship on the surface using her deck gun wherever possible. But if that target turned out to be a Q-Ship, then she might suddenly run up the White Ensign, pop open secret panels and fire back with her own array of larger and more numerous deck guns.
Whether the Q-Ships were worth it is debatable. In truth, they didn’t achieve much in terms of sunken U-boat tonnage, but just the idea that they existed at all may have helped suppress U-boat activity.
Newhaven
The next mile or so was rather more residential, with the roads lined with houses facing out onto Wardie Bay. At the bay’s far end, I arrived at the district and harbour of Newhaven. This was once, as its name suggests, a new haven, though that was a while ago now. Continuing a theme of warships that more useful in concept than reality, it was created by James IV in 1504 to build and house Great Michael, which was not only to be the flagship of the Royal Scots Navy but also, when completed in 1512, the largest ship afloat.
At 73 m long and 1000 tons, Great Michael was a statement but not really practical as Scotland could barely afford to run her. She immediately prompted a naval arms race, spurring England’s Henry VIII – with whom James was at war – to build an even bigger ship that he couldn’t really afford, either. The year after her launch, James was killed at the Battle of Flodden and the year after that, Scotland sold Great Michael to France to be rid of her exorbitant cost.
Newhaven went on to become an important 19th century oyster port and was massively redeveloped in the 1950s and ’60s, leaving much of it unrecognisable.
Newhaven Lighthouse
The cast iron lighthouse at the end of the harbour pier is a bit of an icon for Newhaven. It was made by James Dove & Company in 1869 but not lit until 1878 when the harbour extension works were complete. It was decommissioned in 1930 and its light no longer aids navigation, or at least not officially. In 2018, Forth Ports installed coloured LEDs, which light it up decoratively at night.
Fishmarket Police Box
The police box was the genuine article, not a TARDIS, so time travel was sadly out of the question, but its survival was a lovely surprise, though.
Like many British cities, Edinburgh had a network of police telephone kiosks to keep its constables connected with their stations in the days before portable radios. Edinburgh’s look quite different to those used in London and were designed by city architect Ebenezer MacRae (1881-1951) and manufactured by Carron Ironworks. 142 of them were installed across the city in 1933.
In the 1970s, when personal radios had finally become feasible, the police boxes were phased out of use. Of the original 142, just 75 survive. Over half of these were sold in two relatively recent auctions – in 2012, Lothian and Borders Police sold off 22 of them, and in 2014 its successor, Police Scotland, sold off the last 23 it possessed. The Newhaven Fishmarket box shown above was a lot in that second auction.
Newhaven Tram Stop
The road along which I was walking had been the A901 since Granton harbour and I now planned to follow it for just a short distance more, before switching to something else as my guide where to go. My new guide was to be the Edinburgh Trams network, for its Newhaven tram stop (and terminus) was just one quarter mile onwards from Newhaven Harbour.
Edinburgh’s current tram network is not its first. Once again like many British towns and cities, it had a first generation tramway – Edinburgh Corporation Tramways – which operated from 1871. And, like all of them except Blackpool, it ripped it out in the 1950s, believing the motor vehicle to be king. Like half a dozen others, it has since regretted that decision and it installed a brand-new second generation tramway in 2014.
Edinburgh Trams initially ran between Edinburgh Airport and York Place in but extended to Newhaven in 2023. By chance, that extension would take me to where I needed to go, so I now just needed to follow the tracks.
HMY Britannia
The tramlines almost immediately diverted off the A901, which was fine by me. They headed east along Melrose Street, bringing me to the south-eastern corner of the Port of Leith’s massive Western Harbour. There, moored beside Whisky Quay, was the former Royal Yacht, HMY Britannia, now a museum ship.
The 83rd Royal Yacht since the 1660 Restoration, Britannia served in that capacity from 1954 until 1997, when she was decommissioned in a cost-cutting exercise. I’ve always thought that that was a bit of a false economy as Britannia was more a triumph of national branding than actual transport because ‘ruling the waves’ is famously Britain’s ‘thing,’ making her far more apt and impactful than any official plane.
Ocean Terminal
At the end of Melrose Drive, the tramlines took a left-hand turn into Ocean Drive and I followed them. There, I found Ocean Terminal tram stop and the Ocean Terminal it is named for, which was a large shopping mall opened in 2001. As its name implies, it was originally envisioned as doubling as a passenger terminal for the port, but was never so employed.
Most of the shops were closing as I got there, and the place was emptying out. There were food offerings still open, though – for a given value of ‘food’ – and my body was starting to think my throat had been cut. I relented and chose to answer its demands for sustenance and a sit down, figuring that I had already reached Leith, so if I lost the will to continue now, just one more tram stop from my actual destination, then it would hardly matter.
I didn’t have high expectations for an outlet called McChan’s Oriental Express, and they’re hardly going to win any prestigious culinary awards, but their food was prompt, filling and tasty, which is exactly what I needed. And, despite my fears that I might just give up if I stopped, it went some way to restoring my energy and enthusiasm. I soon emerged back into daylight, ready to see my day’s journey through to the end.
Victoria Bridge
Ocean Drive swung around to run beside Victoria Dock (opened in 1852) and then crossed over the mouth of the Water of Leith via the 1996 Victoria New Bridge that supersedes its 1874 predecessor (Victoria Swing Bridge) immediately upstream. As I approached its western abutment, a couple of things caught my eye:
The building on the left in the photo above is, or was, the Port Authority Building, erected in 1892 and designed by an otherwise mysterious Charles S Robertson, who may have been an architect or civil engineer in the port’s employ. Forth Ports put the building up for sale in 2022, but I’m not sure if anyone bought it.
The vessel on the right is NLV Fingal, a former lighthouse supply tender operated by the NLB between 1963 and 2000. In 2019, after extensive modification and refurbishment, Fingal opened as a boutique hotel on a permanent mooring.
Port of Leith Tram Stop
On the far side of the Water of Leith was Port of Leith tram stop, which I chose to make the official end of my day’s walk. I had done it! Hooray!
Edinburgensian Addendum
Malmaison Hotel
As it happened, my hotel was all of 200 m away and was occupying a historic building constructed in 1885 to serve as a sailors’ home, in which seamen could stay. This was particularly useful for those between contracted voyages.
It was designed by the Orcadian-born architect Charles Johnston (1850-1924) and opened by future prime minister Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929). An angel symbolising the Seaman’s Mission, still watches from above the door.
The Seaman’s home remained in situ until the 1970s – a quick search of newspaper archives shows that it was still there in 1976, but that it had become the Angel Hotel by 1980. It seems to have been renamed the Mariners’ Hotel in 1991, then refurbished by Forth Ports in 1993 and sold to Malmaison as the first of their now sixteen hotels.
Tower Place
The hotel faces onto Tower Place, which has some other features of interest:
The thing in the foreground is actually the Scottish Merchant Navy Memorial and was unveiled in 2010. It comprises as sandstone column decorated with bronze reliefs and sculptures by Jill Watson.
Behind it is the Signal Tower, which is one of the oldest buildings in Leith. It was originally built as a windmill in 1686 by master mason and architect Robert Mylne (1633-1710), for the purpose of pressing rapeseed oil.
Mylne’s Mill (as it then was) was converted in 1805 to an unnecessarily-crenelated signal tower, which displayed flags to warn ships of the water’s depth at the harbour bar, and then extended to create a tenement. In the 1970s, the ground floor formed the Tower Tavern, while the upper floors remained flats. A restaurant now sits at its foot.
Harbour Lighthouse
I assumed, since it is pretty much opposite Victoria Dock, that this little 6 m-high lighthouse was some sort of guiding light for that, but apparently not. It turns out that it’s actually from Burntisland Harbour, where it was erected on the Eastern Breakwater in 1876. It was removed and placed into storage in the mid-1950s at the request of the Royal Navy, who were operating a degaussing station there – protecting ships against magnetically-detonated mines – and the cast iron lighthouse was interfering with their test instruments.
It sat in storage until 1990, when Fife Council were all set to scrap it but Tom Sutherland, the port superintendent for Forth Ports, wanted to preserve its historic value, so had it installed in Tower Place. There it stands today, confusing or deceiving the few who even notice it.
It had certainly deceived me, as I retired into the hotel…
This time: 23½ miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,551 miles
Epic in somany ways.
Congratulations, from both of us, on reaching a landmark coastal location.
T&C
Thanks!