Day 18: And for the finale: St. Andrews (and a wee bit more sunshine)

It’s our last day in Scotland and we battle the urge to sleep in after last night’s revelries.  Well…. some of us sleep in a bit.  I managed a slightly longer run before getting the bacon and eggs going.  Gotta use up all that food in the fridge so we had a full bacon, eggs and beans buffet – except that the three gluten eaters had fresh morning rolls and my GF rolls didn’t make it so I had to do without… 😦

We then collected Gran for a day out – the east coast this time.  We returned to the kingdom of Fife but to St. Andrews this time – the home of golf and the place where Kate and Wills first met.  We actually found a space in a free car park (!) and wandered into the town to get the lay of the land.  We saw a wedding getting started as we walked by the university chapel.  While waiting to catch a glimpse of the bride, I saw a plaque outside the church that said that on that spot in 1534 (?), Patrick Hamilton was burned for heresy for preaching the words of Martin Luther and thereby became the first martyr of the Scottish reformation.  Very interesting!  (But we didn’t hang out long enough to see the bride…)

Of course we needed to have a brilliant lunch and Gran was determined to pick up the bill.  We found a lovely cafe with  a slightly unusual menu:  Gillian got her steak pie which is pretty standard but Frank had a pork and apple pie as part of a ploughman’s lunch and I had a chickpea salad with roasted peppers stuffed with spicy goat cheese – yum!  Gillian declared this one the best steak pie yet and then proceeded to go ga-ga over part of a display:  a blue tin lunch box that bore the simple inscription:”Superhero travel kit.”  We now have the important quest to try to find it somewhere in our travels as we were not successful today.

We did manage to do a little damage in the shops before wandering around the grounds of the cathedral – another 12 century building that was really important until the Reformation.  It’s mostly ruins but St Rule’s tower, built in 1130 for use by the Augustinian monks, is still intact. We opted to skip the 5 pound fee to climb the tower and wander the grounds instead.  We then wandered along the sea wall from the cathedral to the castle – also from about the same time as the cathedral.

It was starting to get late so we moved along through the grounds of the University of St Andrews which was the first university in Scotland and will celebrate its 600th anniversary in 2013.  The campus is beautiful, right on the headlands overlooking the sea.  We passed another wedding on the way back to the car and the sun peeked out of the clouds. (For the golf fans out there, we drove by the Old Course but that’s all.)

We were hoping to stop in Cupar on the way back home so that the old folks could have a cup of tea while the young folks raided the half a dozen charity shops we noted on the way up.  Unfortunately, we didn’t know that most of Cupar closes at 4:30 on a Friday so we were pretty much out of luck.  On the way home a few sprinkles gave way to a true clearing.

After Gran insisted on treating us to dinner at the Pirnhall (a part of the Brewer’s Fayre chain – comfortable but mediocre), we headed back to pack.  Luckily we had picked up an extra bag to help ease the packing crunch we knew would be coming – not including the sword of coarse! – and we finished in pretty short order.  We’ll be heading shortly for one last farewell with Gran:  the ice cream van comes around at about half past 10 for ice creams and sweets and just about the time that the sun will really be setting (yup, you read that right) and since it has remained remarkably clear and is blissfully cool, it will be the perfect ending to this visit.

Three things we noticed today:

1. Pay-and-display parking is so ubiquitous in Britain that car makers actually put a little clip to hold the receipts so that you don’t need to stick it to the windshield.
2. All of Scotland is under construction.  We have seen more traffic cones this week in a very small area of the country than I think VDOT uses in the entire state in a year.
3. Clean public toilets are worth 30p entry fee.  Even the automated toilet booths that wash themselves.