A new favorite place: Fife, Scotland

So what were we to do? We had paid for tickets for all of us to convene in Edinburgh to drop Sebastian off at the University of St. Andrews. Four days before we leave everything changes and he is no longer going there. Cancel Scotland? “No way” says Donella, and she is usually always right, especially as we were already headed to London directly after to attend her graduation. Sebastian informs us that he is not going anywhere near St. Andrews. He’d just started bonding with it and making friends online when the last minute shift to Oxford happened and it was all too sudden and fresh to be able to be just a regular sightseer. I had happened upon a just-released Travel+Leisure article touting the wonders of Fife, Scotland, and I unilaterally decided that twelve miles or so outside of St. Andrews did not technically count as “near,” and a truly magical four days started.

The Fife peninsula lies between Edinburgh and St. Andrews, bounded by the North Sea, the Firth of Tay, and the Firth of Forth—say the last aloud and you’ll see that the fun has already started. The terrain is stunning, reminding me a bit of the Pt. Reyes peninsula in California, but with ancient ruins. It also happens to have a terrific food scene, along with villages right out of one of my favorite movies, Local Hero. I was in love. I haven’t been so strongly drawn to a place in years.

I booked us into one of eight tent cabins right on the sea at Catchpenny Lodges. The “tent” part is an exaggeration. Although they have canvas walls, nothing else is particularly tent-like—the floors are wood, there are two bedrooms with comfortable beds and good sheets, a charming sleeping loft, a bathroom with a rainforest shower, a well-outfitted kitchen with a wood-burning stove/oven, and a front deck with a grill and furniture from which to try to catch a glimpse of dolphins, humpback whales, and sea birds. And it’s totally off-grid. The best part was that in the few yards between the porch and the sea is the Fife Coastal Path, a 116-mile stretch of trail right at the edge of the water. We walked for a half hour to the left and climbed around the ruins of the 15th-century Newark Castle. To the right we walked past the ruins of the Lady’s Tower to the too-cute-to-be-true village of Elie where we had just-caught fish and chips.

The food options rivaled almost anywhere I’ve been in freshness, sophistication, and local sourcing—a few talented chefs and farmers moved to Fife during the lockdown from more urban locations and stayed. I didn’t get a whiff of food preciousness or pretensions either, quite the opposite of what sometimes drives me nuts about food in the Bay Area. Our first dinner was in the tiny fishing village of Lower Largo at the Crusoe, which also has a few rooms and is located right on the beach. We had a memorable candlelit dinner in our own tiny, dark-blue wainscoted room, complete with a fireplace in 17-century pub, The Kinneuchar Inn, with a hyper-local menu that changes daily. But one of my favorite food finds was the Andross Farm shop right at the end of the driveway to our tent cabin. The family farm raises grass-fed beef, mutton, lamb, and vegetables and has a lovely store that features their own bounty as well as loads of freshly prepared meals and pastries—perfect for going back to the cabin and cooking. I loved learning the intricacies of cooking on a wood-fired stove and oven.

And way too soon our few days in Fife were over. We were on to London for a couple of days for Donella’s graduation from UCL, then onto Paris to join friends for an overnight trek to Normandy to go to a new restaurant that one of their friends had started. More on that later, including finding one of the most memorable restaurants I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating at.

And no, we never set foot in St. Andrews. But I can’t wait to. This area of the world is calling me back.