Bartimaeus

With sunny weather and a light breeze forecast, I suggested to Clare that we could go for a train-assisted walk along the Fife Coastal Path.  We took the train to Kinghorn and joined the path there.  After a short walk through the village we walked along the sand towards Burntisland.

There were a few jellyfish on the sand, and some walkers coming the other way.  Most of the bird life was at the water’s edge, more than half a mile away much of the time.  We kept closer to the land so that we didn’t end up in the mud further out.  We passed a tunnel under the railway we had seen on a walk some years ago.  Exploring on that occasion we had found a shrew in the tunnel – not this time though.

Lunch was in a cafe in Burntisland before continuing along the path to Aberdour.  The majority of the walk affords a splendid view across the Forth Estuary to Edinburgh.  It is about five miles across the water, but more than twenty to go via the Forth Bridge.  After another cafe visit at the beach, we had just enough time to walk around the headland before the next train.  At the harbour, it turned out the bridge had been washed away in the winter storms.  With the low tide, we were able to hop across on the unofficial stepping stone – clearly we were not the first to do this.

Later in the week I went for a bike ride with Ewan and Sally.  The wind was still from the east, so we took the train to Dunbar and then cycled home.  It was another day with blue sky over the sea.  We kept to the shore for the first few miles.  The winter storms had brought down many trees on one section, so we detoured around the headland, at one point riding on the beach as it had the firmest sand.

I also cycled home from Dunbar with Kenny at the weekend – the wind was still blowing that way. On Monday Ewan and I cycled further up the coast west of Edinburgh to Bo’ness before getting the train home.  So that was my fourth outing along the Forth in a week.