Fife is an area often overlooked for multi day walking in favour of the more famous trails in the Highlands or the Scottish Borders but it has two long distance routes - the Fife Pilgrim Way and the Fife Coastal Path. In recent years, my dad and I walked both of them. Not as single journeys but as day walks when the opportunity arose. This is easy to do because they are well served by public transport, both trains and buses. The walks were an opportunity to explore in more detail an area familiar to us and to also create some shared memories to relish in the future.
We tackled the Fife Pilgrim Way first. It was a fairly new route at the time we walked it, having just opened in 2019. It is 64 miles long and runs from Culross in the west to St Andrews in the east. It is said to link together medieval pilgrimage routes used by pilgrims travelling to St Andrews Cathedral. It took us a while to complete it as our walks were put on hold through 2020 by the Covid pandemic. But it was worth the wait. Also this meant our journey was stretched over a couple of years and we found joy wandering through the turning of the seasons.
It was early autumn when we set out from Culross and meandered across farmland to Dunfermline by connecting together paths and tracks. The skies were filling with geese, their calls drifting on the air around us and waders picked their way along the shore. The last time we would see the sea until St Andrews.
We passed by Dunfermline Abbey, still an imposing building today and walked out the back of town, heading now towards Kelty and Lochore. One thing about the Fife Pilgrim Way is that it takes you through industrial as well as natural heritage. So north of Kingseat the trail passed by the former site of St Ninian's open cast mine. It's landscaped now and gradually reverting to nature.
Beyond St Ninian's the route passes through Kelty and skirts the pretty shores of Loch Ore. Here the backdrop is Benarty Hill rising above the rolling fields.
Hidden paths then a busy pavement took us onto Kinglassie. It is known that Pilgrims stayed at the church here in the day and visited nearby Finglassin's Well which was said to have healing powers.
A series of delightful rural paths then took us onwards to the outskirts of Glenrothes. We had thought we were in for a long plod across town at this point but the route expertly strings together parks and green spaces such that we barely saw anything of the town at all.
I really enjoyed all of the sections beyond Glenrothes. The paths and tracks were lovely to walk and at times you felt a million miles away from the world as you passed through secret woods and skirted hidden waters. It was lovely. Many of the paths here felt very old, they just had that sense of being built long ago for foot travelers. One especially interesting feature here was the church at Markinch. It sits in the middle of town on a high, grassy knoll. There has been a structure on the site since the 1100s. We were amazed for how far on our walk we could still see the church rising above the surrounding fields and were sure the site must have been chosen for its prominence in every direction.
Beyond Windygates and Kennoway was a long, quiet stretch untouched by a road or house that eventually brought us down to Clatto Den and Clatto Reservoir, an idyllic spot in the sunshine. It was autumn at this point and on one track the mud was deep enough to reach over the tops of our boots.
The next stop was Ceres, undoubtedly one of the highlights of the route. It's a picturesque village with beautiful old buildings and the fabulous Bishop's Bridge, a 17th century packhorse bridge that crosses Ceres Burn. It was a step back in time and made us feel like proper ancient pilgrims as we walked across its cobbled arch.
After Ceres came a decent climb up Ladeddie Hill which really opened up the view over the way we had come. We could see the Lomond Hills, always a striking compass point from anywhere in Fife. Dropping down the other side, we passed through Craigtoun Country Park where we used to go for days out as a young family.
For the final walk into St Andrews it was spring time and the trail brought us in along another highlight of the route, the Lade Braes. Dating from medieval times, the lade is an artificial watercourse that brought water down into St Andrews, powering mills as it went.
At the bottom of Lade Braes we popped out into the centre of St Andrews and walked its fine old streets to end our walk at St Andrews Cathedral.
While none of the scenery on the Fife Pilgrim Way was spectacular, it was one of those walks where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The route took us on a fabulous meandering journey through the heart of Fife along quiet paths, old roads and forgotten lanes. It opened up secretive little places that we never knew existed and afforded new angles on places we were familiar with. And we made some lovely memories to treasure.
