A Visit to Fife’s East Neuk - Elie
On my first visit, the weather was very windy and cloud raced across the sky, but no rain threatened and the drive down the country roads through the rich farmland was very pleasant. Many of the fields had been harvested and the ubiquitous giant rolls of straw were scattered about the fields. I came across the turn off for Elie quite suddenly, then followed the road until it narrowed where it crosses a sort of bridge just as the road enters the town.
After that I followed the main road sharp left and parked in front of some shops in the bays marked for cars. There is a big old church opposite (Elie Parish Church I think), but I didn't look at it for I wanted to see the beach and the sea. I walked down School Wynd then eastwards along The Terrace. The houses block the view of the sea at first, but then give way to gardens that slope down to the sea and the beach. The view was amazing. The tide was mostly in and the sea was rough with the tops blown off the waves in the gale force winds.
At the far eastern end of the bay, only a few hundred yards from where I stood, the dunes were topped by Marram grass and a couple of hardy tourists were sitting on the sand.
I walked round the road that borders the sea with a sea wall to shelter the road from the waves and past the very picturesque cottages of the Toft, then left the road to walk on the beach by the dunes. The sand blown off the beach stung my face and I watched as two people wrestled with a power boat just off the beach in the wild sea. They got it started and headed for the harbour and safety less than 50 metres away.
Two windsurfers were struggling with their brightly coloured boards and managed to sail at some speed across the bay before falling off. I think that they had hired the boards and wet suits from a hire firm in a big wooden building just along the beach that also had canoes and pedallos ( for gentler weather!) for hire. I took lots of photos on the beach then crossed over the harbour road to take pictures of the waves exploding over the rocks before wandering back to the car, but only used one on the website. I already had one supplied by my friend of a much gentler and sunnier day showing cricketers playing on the beach when the tide was fully out which I used on the website as well.
I enjoyed that visit so much that I returned two months later with my wife, this time on a beautiful sunny day. We followed the same route as I had previously, but the tide was fully out and the sands were exposed.
When you first see the bay, it comes as a shock. My wife described the feeling of tremendous spaciousness, of freedom; a feeling of being able to breathe; a bit like being hit with a cool breeze after a stuffy room. When we went towards the harbour, our eyes were drawn across the wide, wide sands to the low cliffs of Earlsferry and then out to sea. The streets of Elie are laid out quite regularly, in rectangles (except right beside the harbour) and the houses are generally not of the great ages found in the other perhaps more picturesque East Neuk towns, so the feel is quite different. Nonetheless, my wife decided that she wanted to live there when we win the lottery because she liked it so much.
The main street has some useful shops and she reckoned you could probably live there without having to travel to another town for groceries. Self contained, she said. I particularly liked the name of one of the shops, the "Elie Deli".
We watched children running across the sands, one jumping in every puddle of sea water she could find, watched by a patient adult. It looked like fun.
I've sort of hinted at the way the town extends around the bay and becomes Earlsferry as you go west along the beach. There is a golf course as you head towards Earlsferry and then the beach becomes cliffs made by lava flows about 300 million years ago where you can go on the Chain Walk along the cliffs to MacDuffs cave. The walk to Earlsferry around the bay is very pretty and I have done it and done the Chain Walk, but my wife didn't think she was up to either the walk or clambering along the chain walk. As we headed up to the car I saw lots of Swallows and Martins flying quite high. Down at street level there were lots of Red Admiral butterflies. I hadn't seen any this Summer and wondered at the concentration of them here. We watched them for a few minutes then headed for St Monans.
I am a part time web site designer and keen photographer. I was introduced to web design and coding during my studies for a degree in computing, and my interest in photography stems from the need to provide interesting, good quality images in my sites. I was designing a web site for a friend to advertise their holiday house in Anstruther a couple of months ago and I needed some new pictures for the site to show the visitor aspects of the locality. Much of the charm of the holiday house is the easy access to beautiful neighbouring villages along the coast of that part of Fife known as the East Neuk. The house can be seen at http://fifecoastalcottages.co.uk |