Fife Coastal Path

The reason why I haven't written anything this week is because I have actually been really busy doing readings and working on a paper. I didn't think that anyone really wanted to hear about all that so...

However, after doing all this work, I realized that I really needed to get away and do something fun this weekend, so a friend of mine and I decided to walk the Fife Coastal Path. We decided that, because I had to be home for a dinner party, we would just walk for about 4 or 5 hours, then turn around and come home. So off we went. It was suppose to be cloudy today but it turned out to be a spectacularly gorgeous day with the sun shining brightly and not a cloud in the sky. Absolutely amazing considering this is Scotland. Two other friends from my residence decided to join us for the first couple hours and we had a great time just wandering around the beaches outside of my town.

The trail itself is amazing. In many places you have a choice of walking around on the beach or on the path so we pretty much stayed to the beaches on the way there and on the path on the way back. On our way we found lots of cool shells, a variety of beaches (including rock beaches, shell beaches, sand beaches, and grass? beaches). Who knew that there would be such variety in the types of shore there would be in a fairly small geographical area.

There is one point where the trail goes inland and you end up walking around past farmer's fields. As we walked through the forest we came across this fantastic old building. Turns out it's an old water mill (according to my friend) and we had a great time exploring around it and other such great things. I just love it here and the fact that as you are travelling around the countryside you can just come across these incredible abandoned old buildings!

We finally reached the first sign of civilization at about 2:00 and decided that it was a good time to starting thinking about heading back. By this time we had walked about 7.5 miles (sorry guys but the signs are in miles here, I have no idea what that is in Kilometers). Heading back took less time since we pretty much stuck to the trail but at one point we saw a pretty cool looking cave just up the hill from the path and decided to take a look. Unfortunately, in between us and the cave was this great field full of a lovely plant called stinging nettle. Now, for all those Canadians out there that don't know what this lovely plant is, it's a plant that has these leaves that can sting you through your clothes. They give you this sort of tingly, itchy, sensation to whatever touches it. If it gets you through your clothes it only tingles for a hour or so, but if you touch it directly, your skin gets all red and itchy and can hurt for a couple of days (if you fall directly into a patch like I did when I was in Wales). Anyways, we decided we wouldn't let this stuff get in the way of our exploration and made our way up the slope only to find a fairly shallow cave that had been completely taken over by birds. Feathers and stuff everywhere. Actually quite gross and a little bit of a disappointment. And then we had to go back through the stinging nettle to get back to the path. However, I guess that's what adventures are all about!

Here's a picture of my friend looking not too pleased about these lovely plants with the cave in the background.