The Fife Coatsal Path

This morning I woke up at my leisure and made a pretty sweet breakfast, if I do say so myself. I think I finally mastered making coffee with a french press. Woo!

I mean dayum. Muesli with yogurt and fruit. Toast, eggs, and coffee.

Well done me. I then made a sandwich and gathered some other food to bring with my on my hike. I packed up my backpack and headed out. It was a sunny, blustery day, the perfect temperature for a good walk. The daffodils bobbed their heads as I passed, making my way down the road to town.

 I did a small portion of the Fife Coastal Path. I started in Kinghorn and made it to the outskirts of Kirkaldy. I was originally planning to go a little past Kirkaldy, to Dysart, but there was a street fair going on, and I didn't feel like trying to find my way through that. I was there for the nature. And nature there was. 

 

I did a portion within section two.

 I knew where the path began to head back towards Burntisland, but I only had a rough idea of where it started to go towards Kirkcaldy. It took me three tries to figure out exactly where it began. I found the trail right away, but I could not for the life of me find the trail head. But alas, I did find it and began my hike. 

The church in Kinghorn.

The start of the path.

 Right off the bat, the views were absolutely stunning. From the trail, I could see across the sparkling blue firth over to Arthur's seat in Edinburgh, and across the sprawling rocky beaches beyond the path ahead. 

The path.

Across the way is Arthur's seat.

My pace was slowed considerably, mostly because I kept getting extremely distracted by all the beautiful panoramic views and the beaches. I could spend a whole day just clambering around the beach pictured above. There are so many areas to explore and things to find. But I did my best to contain myself so I would actually end up going somewhere. 

Much of the path was very easy, only with slight inclines every now and then. Those inclines provided for spectacular vantage points. 

A sign for the coastal path with Arthur's seat and Black Rocks in the horizon. What a view.

After about an hour or so of walking, the silhouette of a crumbling stone building rose up out of the bluffs. It was that of Seafield Tower, built in the 16th century. This to me is the essence of Scotland. Cool old castles steeped in history. If I had a nickel for every time that I have watched a ghost show about a Scottish castle, I could probably buy a castle. The history behind them is always fascinating, so I was totally psyched when I saw this was en route.

I spent a fair bit of time walking along the beach and sitting on the rocks in front of the tower. For a while I looked out on the rocks and watched the waves crash against them. A faint movement on the rocks caught my eye. I stared and stared for the longest time, trying to figure out what the movement was. My first thought was that it looked like a sheep moving its head up and down. But that made no sense. Then I though perhaps it was a garbage bag being blown about, until I saw the same movement a little farther left on the rock. Seals. They were seals. About ten seals were all basking on the rocks. It was so very cool. I also figured out that I seriously need to wear my glasses more often...

It's zoomed in pretty far, but can you see the seals?

I continued along the path until I reached the beach just before Kirkcaldy. As soon as I saw what looked like a carnival in the distance, I stopped and had my picnic. As I said before, it was some street festival, and I just didn't want to get anywhere near the crowds. 

Best sandwich ever! (not really.) (it was alright.)

On my way back, I passed the castle again and I took a butt ton more pictures. Here a few of them:

Check out that red sandstone.

Then it was back to the path. I took a quick detour onto a beach I had passed on the way. A small path was of indented grass lead down a small hill and onto the beach. There I walked along the sand, skirting the cliffs. Suddenly, I noticed an opening, a split in the rocks. Sure enough, it was the gaping mouth of a cave about fifty feet high. I was not expecting to find this, so it was an added bonus to the days adventure. 

The small path lead here.

This is my "This cave is creepy and I'm not going any closer" face.

I walked up close to mouth, but did not actually go inside. It emanated a damp air and stony silence. The only sound was the occasional dripping as it echoed off the stone walls of the cave. I stood there for what seemed like a long while, entranced by the utter silence. The spell was broken when a couple and their dog walked by and I began to head back to Kinghorn and to the farm. 

This place is becoming like home

I have now been here on the farm for about a week. I am both astounded and pleased at how quickly I adjusted to life here. It is such a beautiful location filled with a community of interesting people from all walks of life. In just a week I have learned so much about all these people, farming, as well as myself. 

Lessons learned so far:
-Barbed wire sucks. 
-I want to live in a tree house. 
-I still have a lot of work to do to improve my Scottish accent.
-Just go with the flow. 
-Take each day (and challenge) and they come. 
-Things are only overwhelming if you make them that way. 

The last three ideas are things that everyone knows, but there is a difference between knowing something and really learning it.


Anyway, it's been really great so far and I can't wait to see what the rest of my time here will bring. 

This morning was another sunny windy day. Richard and I finished the fencing job down the the field. 

 I got to take another trip to the recyling center! Three days in a row! woo! This time I took a picture to show just how nicely marked/organized this place is. There is a spot for absolutely everything so it can be recycled properly. So cool.

Just one section of the center. Or should I say centre.

Then it was off to the jewelry shop to help out for the afternoon. It was more tartan bag tying and gem sandpapering. 

After I had finished my jobs there, Adam and I went over to the horse barn to dig up some manure. We filled containers with it, then transported them over to some bigger bins, where we would crumble up the larger chunks of horse poop by hand. 

View from the barn.

A wee bit of horse poop!

It was quite a process, especially considering that there was an electric fence between the horse barn and where we were putting the manure in the larger bins. So every time we had to take a stick, lift of the wire, and carefully step through. Then proceed with our crap crumbling. (ohh alliteration!) I enjoyed it a lot actually. It was a good workout and the weather was really nice out. 

Then is was 5 and I came inside and watched the Catching Fire trailer for the first time. Holy poop!!!!! I can't wait for that movie to come out. I almost peed when I saw it. 

Dinner was in the tree house again. We watched a cool thing about tsunamis on a projector screen and had a Spanish omelet and salad. Twas delicious. I did the dishes, and then helped Adam give Shiraz her pill. Let's just say it was quite a struggle and she was sulking some where when I left. Sorry Shiraz...

Thanks for reading and be sure to check back for more! I have an exciting weekend of hiking planned. :)

Techno makes you work faster!

This morning I woke up to a very rainy day. It was overcast and rainy heavily; quite a change from the previous few days of intense wind. The weather website told me it was going to low 50's and rainy all day, but when I got outside it felt a lot colder. It was a damp sort of cold. The kind that makes it feel especially nice to come inside. 

I spent the morning, as usual, with Richard working on "farm" stuff. We took a trip to the recycling center with a trailer full of the rusty old bits of wire from the old fence. It took about 20 times longer to unload the trailer than it should have because it kept getting tangled. After we returned we started a new project of cleaning out the barn. It is a large stone building filled with anything and everything you can imagine. It needs a lot of help in the organization department. An Australian guy named Matty, who also lives on the farm, came to help us out. Think of any stereotypical image of a cluttered attic. That's what it looked like in there. Only worse. There were 3 boats, about 5 bikes, tons of farm tools, boards, lamps, petrol cans, chairs, tables. Just about everything. So anyway, we cleaned that out until lunch, filling the trailer right back up again, and then some. 

Then it was off the the work shop to help out with the jewelry. Adam and Rich (I am going to call him that from now on so we can differentiate between him and Richard; Diana's son.) the tunes balsting and I was set right to work. I was retying knots on the little bags they give customers with their jewelry. They are made from old tartans. I probably did over 100 of them. Halfway through, Adam made some really good coffee that gave me just the swift kick in the pants I needed to get going. Then Diana's grand daughter, Rachel came over to help out. She's about my age and is going to art school in Edinburgh. 

Adam cranked up the techno and we all got working on our own seperate projects. I tied those knots, used the dremel tool, and sanded the backs of the gems. We were all working in this really good techno induced groove. It was just a really fun time. The atmosphere was light hearted, fun, and productive. I enjoyed myself quite a bit. It was so rainy outside, it was nice to be inside. 

Just another picture of the farm buildings. I can't get over how cool they are.

Again I had dinner up in the tree house. Matty came and Adam's friend Josh from London came as well. He brought Ben & Jerry's phish food. So not only did I have a great dinner with some cool guys in a tree house, but I had phish food dessert. 

Adam and Matty told this great story about a time they went fishing out in the fourth in a crappy old boat that started to sink. The wind, the tide, and the boat for that matter was against them. So they were rowing and rowing trying to get back to shore. Adam then asked Matty to throw the anchor over, that way they could at least stay put and figure out a way to get help. Matty did. Only Ada, had forgotten to tie the anochor line onto the boat. Nice. Anyway, the story is not as good retold by me, it's better to hear it live, but I though I had to share it. I really enjoyed hearing it and had a good time hanging out with them.

 

Crappy iPod picture, but that is Shiraz, Adam's cat sitting there.

 Sidenote: The whole time while we were eating, Shiraz was lying on her back just rolling around, showing off her spotty belly, giving that Puss in boots look. Meaning this:

 

It was totally adorable. Anyway, see you tomorrow! 

 

Barbed wire and Scottish marble

This morning after breakfast, Diana and I went up to meet and have tea with yet another member of the lovely community living here at the farm. Magda is a polish lady that moved to Scotland about 6 years ago. She and her family live in this cool little house next to Adam's jewelry workshop. She showed me a picture of when they first moved in; the building was about half the size. Since then, she and her husband have expanded in several ways. By now, the back of the building is built into the rocks behind it. It is honestly one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I know I said that about the tree house, but this is also just as awesome.  She is working on restoring this boat:

Anyway, after a nice cup of tea in the sunny sitting room and pleasant conversation, I went to help Richard in the field with the fencing project. We went along the length of the field snipping away at the old rusty barbed wire. Excuse my french, but that shit is nasty. Although not as bad as the new stuff. At least the rusty stuff could be twisted into submission. After clearing away all the old stuff, we unrolled a spool of new barbed wire (yay!) and stapled it to the new fence posts. As careful as I tried to be, I still manged to cut myself on it. 

Then after we had lunch, I went over to the jewelry workshop to work on a few things there. I filled a bunch of tiny glass bottles with little bits of Scottish marble, then capped them with corks. I have no idea what purpose they will serve, but the Scottish marble is really cool stuff.

 Then I was tasked with helping pour vegetable oil into various different bins and through different filtration systems. Why? Because both Adam and his business partner run their vehicles on it. How cool is that? They just collect the used vegetable oil from restaurants. The whole time I was pouring the bins out into other bins, I kept thinking of how much it smelled like a McDonald's. And french fries. And how I was super hungry and totally would have eaten some crappy French fries...

Regardless, I learned a lot about the process of turning vegetable oil into something you can use to run your car.

I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering rocks and building debris from behind the jewelry shop and bringing it around to the top of a small hill. They have plans to use the stuff to build some kind of a stone wall, so I was just getting the materials from point A to point B. It was a good work out.  Eventually I got lazy and started chucking the rocks up over the wall and right on the hill top. It worked out much better than walking to wheel barrel, puting rocks in, gathering more, then going around, dropping them off at the top, then going back. Instead it was throw, gather, throw, climb up and sort. Yay for being lazy! (Innovative??)

Then I had to clear out all the leaves from the little area behind the work shop. By this point, it had begun to rain quite hard, so all the leaves were all soggy and disgusting. And I was clearing them by hand. For that hour and a half that it took me to clear them away, I lived in constant fear of coming upon a spiders nest/ some other nasty bug. So I squatted down, sifting through the gravel to gather the slimy black leaves, then put them all in the wheel barrel. Can I just say, this was really difficult. Mostly because the leaves had been there since fall and were completely padded down. The rain made it even more difficult. And my fear of spiders made it more stressful than it should have been.

I ended my day covered in dirt, pretty tired, but overall pretty satisfied with my work. That's the thing about farm work, you really can see your works progression. It is a lot more rewarding than completing something on the computer. I still like my computer, but there is something more satisfying about mucking around in soggy leaves than clicking on icons on a screen.  

Okay enough of that hippie rant, see you tomorrow! Thanks for reading!

I don't know what day it is, but I am in Scotland

My dad drove me to the Boston airport around noon for my 4:50 departure to Amsterdam. It took about 5000 hours to get through security, then I waited a longer at the gate for boarding. Which also took forever. Finally, I was on the plane to Amsterdam; the first leg in the Scottish adventure. 

I was seated in the second closest to the isle in that row of four seats that are on big air planes. Next to me was a girl named Brittany who was on a artists retreat to Italy, had never been over seas before, and really liked turbo shot espresso. Who knew? I do now. Ah the perks of being forced to sit to a complete stranger for 7 hours. Surprisingly we were actually served a dinner AND a breakfast. What? Two times the crappy plane food; but it was nice to have. I am so used to flights not giving you anything but a menu with items that cost all twenty bucks. 

ANYWAY. After doing the "uh huh, I'm sleeping" for a few hours in several equally as uncomfortable and awkward positions, I just gave up and watched Silver Linings Playbook. Jennifer Lawrence, I love you. 

Then we arrived in a very gray and misty Amsterdam at 5 am their time. I knew that this airport is pretty big, so I rushed over to gate D2, only to find all these people waiting on the other side of a glass wall. My tired brain not working properly, I thought "That's my flight, I have to get in there!" (Keep in mind it's 5 am and my flight didn't even board until 7:30. Nice Annie. Nice) So I go around around the side, but no avail! It too is glass wall. So I go to the one area that looks like how one would get into this strange waiting area. Through the security check point. That is closed. But I walked right through, right into a closed sliding glass door. Dummy! Anyway it was super awkward because everyone waiting for that saw be an idiot, but it was also really funny. 

Then I pretty much zoned out until we boarded. This time the flight was only 1 hour 15 minutes. It was actually very pleasant. I actually slept and they gave us some really good sandwiches. And crappy coffee. 

We landed in Edinburgh and I got my  bag exchanged some currency and was on bus 747 to Inverkeithing rail station. It was that easy. Every day before I left for this trip, I speculated about how that would go down; could I find it? Where would it be? Would it be easy to find? Blah Blah Blah. All that projection and speculation just made me more nervous than I had to be. It was a breeze. The bus to the station. Station to Kinghorn. Which by the way, has the most amazing view of any station I have ever been to. The second I stepped off the train I was hit with fresh ocean breeze and the sound of squawking seagulls. A sounds and smell very familiar to me. Only this breeze had bite to it. It was crisp and refreshing; especially after hours of airplane air. 

Behind the station.

Luggage.

The coolest thing that I noticed about this area is the amount of old stone buildings. They are everywhere. These Harry Potter-esq type buildings just pop up every now and again.

They are really amazing. 

I walked to the top of the hill and used the pay phone to call my host to let him know I had arrived. Who knew pay phones still existed? Let alone serve a purpose? Wow.

I waited there next to my bad taking in the air and the sights, wondering how I would know who it was coming to get me. I had only ever e-mailed with him before. Then a big green Mercedes-Benz van with the words "Running of Flower Power" on the side comes pulling up the curb. Hmmm... was that my ride?

I <3 Hippies. So so much.

Then my host Adam drove me to where I am now and will be for the next few weeks; Craigencalt Farm. It's a 200 year old farm building complex that used to be a water mill. It- again- looks like it should be in Diagon Alley. It is situated right above Kinghorn Loch. An from the fields, you can see the Forth of Fife. I mean come on. These are the kinds of sights I have only ever dreamt about. 

So Adam showed me around the farm house and told me about how things work on the farm. Then he said to just go off and wander around and explore and be back by 1 for lunch. Yup. Sounds good to me. So I just explored all the grounds of this area, in a somewhat tired stupor. Here are some pictures I took. 

Olivanders shop is just around the corner...

Part of the farm is rented out by the ecology center. There's lots of paths and cool stuff. Descriptive. I know.

The road leading up to the farm.

A farm cat sitting on the stone wall. Kinghorn loch in the background.

 After my walk around, I met my fellow American WWOOFer, Mike. He is a really cool guy that had been backpacking through out the UK having cool experiences since January. These are the kind of cool people you meet when you WWOOF.

We gathered some wood for the sauna (that Adam built) then had lunch. Adam made this awesome lunch with all these fresh ingrediants. Did I mention he lives in a tree house? A tree house. The coolest tree house you will EVER see. It has evrything you need, nothing you don't, and a tree going right through the middle. I don't have any pictures right now, but I will be taking some for sure. 

Then we worked out in the field gathering up old fence peices and such. I was doing it in a tired zombie like trance, but I enjoyed it a lot. The view to the ocean is incredible. Again, I will take pictures... I won't hog all the beauty. :p

We ended the night with a great dinner with the owners if the farm. They are both super nice and it has been wonderful meeting them. 

Annie's lesson of the day: Do something out of your comfort zone and you will be amazed at what happens. 

Stay tuned for more!