Taking A Long Walk Around A Short Pier

Storm Abigail has arrived to batter an already weather-beater Scotland, but yesterday, in the (albeit very dark and brooding) calm before the storm, my sister and I made our way around the castle, harbour and pier, and a little way out into the East Sands, for a pretty good ten thousand step walk.

The last time I was down at the harbour for a wander was a good few years ago, and I'm ashamed to admit, born locally as I was, that I'd never been down the ancient pier at all. If I was to be honest, however, I'd confess that walking down an old and not particularly wide stone protuberance into the wild, uncaring North Sea (and its equally unsympathetic gusts of wind) was not something I was happy to undertake when I was bigger. Now though, well, the skies may have been threatening doom and gloom overhead (and already dispensing a deluge to the north) but I finally made it to the iconic point at which all tourists to St Andrews take a photo. The End Of The Pier.

Actually, the real end was a bit further on, but thanks to the combination of a family littering their offspring all over the wall a little in front of us, a young man armed with several fishing rods and colourful plastic bags taking over a set of steps from the lower level to the top level, and a teenage emo kid slouching over her mobile phone at the very end of the pier, I don't actually have a photo from the pier-head. I was there, but no, I unless I was aiming for Landscape In Black, Plastic & Familia Vexo, I have no proof to show you. I can present evidence that I was in the vicinity, though...



I'm actually going a bit pictorially backwards here, as the route we took started along The Scores (one of the ancient roads of the town that follows, at a discreet expensive-house-and-large-garden distance, the line of the cliffs), past the castle, alongside the cathedral wall, then down the pathway to the harbour, via a couple of tradition point-and-shoot castle views (the latter of which I didn't know about, being just at the slipway opposite the beginning of the pier) and past a couple of cannon that I had no idea were there. It's not the first time I've learnt more about a place by being away from it, than by living in it, or nearby! Shocking! (Familiarity breeds ennui, perhaps?!)

I feel obliged to point out that there were two cannon, but someone from the Council, years ago, must have deemed it appropriate to separate them with a substantial rubbish bin, so no, I have no evidence of there being two cannon, either. Had I my wits about me I could have created a Beauty and The Beast montage of the afore-mentioned Landscape In Plastic with a Portrait of Ordnance and Litter. Alas, instead we have a single cannon pointed toward hostile skies, which is probably pretentious enough for me, anyway!