Day 23: Ruined abbeys and renewed friendships

July 14 –

It’s supposed to be a nice day today so we pack up and head to the lovely kingdom of Fife to wander around the ancient village of Culross.  We saw the Tron where the 15th century market transactions took place as well as the ruins of the abbey from about the same period.  The oldest headstone we could make out was from 1691 – I suspect that the ones with little or no writing and lots of moss were older but who knows.  Unfortunately, it was cloudy and windy and not at all what we had expected weatherwise so we didn’t spend too much time out in the open.

So we pushed on up the coast to Dunfermline to get some lunch – just in time to get rained on but just a little.  We wandered around the town a bit, saw 3 weddings in progress and explored the ruins of Dunfermline Abbey.

Then on to Cambusbarron to visit with our great pals Gilbert and Jenny and their kids Lewis and Jordan.  They had come to visit us last year for two weeks and we had a great time.  Now we were invading their bit for a few hours and the sun decided to peak out enough to allow us to BBQ and eat outside.  We got to play with the new boxer puppy, Milo, and catch up. 

After dinner, another of Frank’s old friends showed up with his girlfriend.  We hadn’t seen Mike in about 10 years and were meeting Kirsty for the first time but it was a fantastic evening with many bottles of wine being consumed…. at about 11:30, the kids were *really* too tired, as was the puppy, so we abandonded the car for the mile or so walk home.  At that time of night it was just finally getting to be full dark and the castle was lit up and looked fantastic from the distance.

/san/

[Pedometer: 16,893 or about 8 miles over broken stones and along dark streets…}