The point of today was to catch up with our Bathurst correspondents. We haven’t seen then since 2019 but they are over from Australia visiting their daughter and her family in St Andrews. This trusty pair have been responsible for much of our sconological knowledge of New South Wales with posts from Myrtle House, the Blue Wren Bush Cafe, Clancy’s Cafe and many more. Typically, they arrived on bikes for our meeting at Rufflets Hotel in Fife.

It was fantastic to find them in good form and catch up on all their news. After a great chat, all too soon, we had to bid them farewell. We decided to try and find nearby Kingsbarns Distillery.

This is definitely golf country. Thousands of golfers from all over the world make the pilgrimage to St Andrews, where it all started. It’s just seven miles away from Kingsbarns. It was a former golf caddie, Douglas Clement, who realised that golfers also loved the amber nectar but there was no handy distillery for them to visit. He decided that a disused building in Kingsbarns would be ideal. After a shaky start bogged down in financial woes, the Wemyss family (pronounced Weems), who live nearby in Wemyss Castle, came to the rescue. The distillery eventually opened in 2014. Kingsbarns got its name in 1519 when the barns here supplied the royal palaces at Falkland and Crail.

Good deals

When we arrived it was very busy with German and French tourists but it soon settled down when their buses left. The cafe is light and airy and they had scones – plain, fruit and cheese. You could get a bowl of soup packaged with a cheese scone so we went for that. We were going to share the cheese scone and then share a fruit scone with our tea later. The lady serving us said she would put it through as two soup/ scones because that would be cheaper for us … how thoughtful! We thoroughly enjoyed everything although they don’t have a kitchen so everything has to be brought in from external bakers Fisher & Donaldson in St Andrews.

Doves and pigeons

Not a topscone but it’s great to see yet another new distillery trying to cater to the seemingly insatiable global demand for Scotch. Biggest market last year was France with India not far behind. Third was the US … come on guys, we thought it was “America first”. We did our bit by buying a bottle of Kingsbarns Doocot whisky as well as a bottle of their Darnley’s gin. A ‘doocot’ (part of a building housing doves and pigeons) forms part of the distillery building.

We had been advised to go and visit Kingsbarns beach. Thinking it was simply a matter of walking towards the sea we inadvertently ended up trudging through Kingsbarns Gold Links. It’s a famous course which  has hosted many major tournaments … the helipad was a bit of a giveaway! Goodness, if we had known we wouldn’t have bothered with the car! Golf has been played here since 1793 and the 12th hole is a 606 yard monster. I only played golf as a youth. That was because I was too immature to realise it was a huge waste of time. Mind you, much of my golfing career was spent in the bushes looking for my ball.

We did eventually make it to the beach which stretches as far as the eye can see in both directions. However, the weather today was coming in from Greenland and wasn’t too conducive to building sand castles. 

Contentment

On the way home we paid a visit to Crail which was as quaint as ever.  

People in the Kingdom of Fife are an independent lot and quite content with their lot. Once, when a Fife man was asked if he had ever been abroad, responded with “I once knew a man who had been to Crail“. Maybe we should all try to be a bit more content like that man from Fife and not be surprised when other people from Sudan and elsewhere want to see if they can find contentment.

It has been another great day. We are sooo lucky to live in Scotland with all this stuff on our doorstep! The Doocot is lovely, by the way, light with a hint of pepperiness … a good breakfast whisky, cheers!

KY16 8QE.      tel: 01333 451300.        Kingsbarns Distillery

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