Back from my travels!

I needed to get away for a few days so last Thursday I started surfing the net to see if I could find a last minute deal. When I was just about to give up late Friday afternoon I got lucky and managed to book a house for two days on the east coast. Our apartment was the top floor of a victorian town house in the beautiful village of St Monans.  It had only recently been renovated and we were one of the first tenants to use it. I finished working at 4.00pm , went and picked up some groceries, threw some clothes in a case and off we went. Living in such a small country in only took us two hours to get there. Over the two days we visited a few national trust houses, gardens and some of the coastal villages. As usual I have some photographs to share. I hope you enjoy your trip to the east coast of Fife.

This was the view from the apartment window.

The apartment was so nice we didn;t want to come home. Being by the seaside it was full of lovely finishing touches, little fishing boats, birds,driftwood etc and of course if was so peaceful and quiet.

St Monans is a small fishing village on the east coast of Scotland. The 14th century church lies closer to the sea than any other church in Scotland.

The Windmill was built in 1771 for the salt industry. For many years the only remenant left was the stump. It was re-stored and re-roofed in the 1980's.

The final picture is of a Heron. Ian had his tripod all set up eager to get the perfect picture of the bird in flight. I couldn;t stop laughing after standing there for thirty minutes this couple came along and started talking to him, took his eyes off it for seconds and it opened its wings and flew across the rocks. Oops he missed it..LOL.

Elie is another pretty coastal village.

I just loved this cute little blue cottage in the village green.

Lady’s Tower was built sometime after 1750 as a summerhouse for Lady Janet Anstruther who enjoyed bathing naked in the sea. It is reported a bellman was sent round Elie to warn the villagers to keep away. The seashore between Lady’s Tower and Elie Lighthouse is called Ruby Bay as garnets (Elie rubies) are found on its beach.

Pittenweem is home to one of Scotland’s last remaining fishing fleets. It was granted the status of a Royal Burgh by James V in 1541, giving it the right to self government and the right to trade with other countries in return for paying taxes to the crown. By 1587 Pittenween ranked as the twelfth richest town in Scotland. This is where we sat on Saturday night and tucked into a bag of chips (fries) wrapped up in old newspaper. The seagulls always hang around waiting to pick up any remnants.

On our travels we visited the Wemyss Ware studio. I managed to sneak a few photographs inside of the beautiful pottery and how excited was I when I saw the chair with the stitching. It looks too pretty to sit on..lol. Wemyss ware was first produced in 1882 by the Fife pottery, which had been making pottery in muted colours since the 18th century. The world record for a Wemyss piece stands at £34,800 for a rare sleeping pig decorated with roses.

This is Kellie Castle which dates back to the 14th Century and is supposed to be haunted. Like most of the National trust places we visit the flowers in the gardens haven't flowered yet but I still managed to find a few pretties.

Our next property we visited was The Hill of Tarvit, a large mansion house that was built in 1906. I was very disappointed to find that the house was closed and you could only view the gardens. There is a large collection of flemish tapistries inside that I would loved to have viewed.

It has taken me hours to do this post as I need to re-size a lot of photographs before I can post so I have been doing it over a few days, how mad am I to find that when I came back to it today half the original post I had drafted was gone.

Anway for those who are still with me just one more place to visit.

On our way home on Sunday we stopped off at the town of Culross. This is the most complete examples in Scotland of a burgh of the seventeen and eighteenth centuries. It looks like a film set and has been used many times over by film and tv makers to film historical dramas but it is living community housing families like any other town but wow how wonderful it must be to live in these 17th century homes.

This building is known as Culross Palace even though it was never a royal residence, the word palace was misinterprertated in the title deeds in the 19th century. The building is actually a unique example of a Merchants house. The west block dates from 1597 and the north wing was built in 1611. I apologise for the quality of the pictures , Ian took most of them with his Iphone as we are not really supposed to take photos inside but the first room we entered had the stitching hanging on the wall and the dresses so I just couldn't resist. I;ve never been in a historic property before where there were  no attendants and of course when I saw the stitching lying on the table I was beside myself. All of the stitching was done by the Culross needlework group which was only formed in 1986. They have done an amazing job of producing these pieces. The round stumpwork is part of a bedspread, I didn;t get a picture but it was a four-poster bed where all the hangings around the bed had also been stitched.

Well I hope you have enjoyed coming along on my week-end with me. I must confess I did take my stitching along with me but only did a few stitches on Saturday night. I am way behind on stitching and blog reading, I do miss reading everyones blog when I am away so I am looking forward to catching up on everyone. Hugs!