Fife is one of those places which I’ve always wanted to visit, but never been quite sure when to go. In summer, when the weather is good but it’s likely to be crowded? Or in winter, when it’s quiet but the Scottish weather generally ranges from pants to appalling?
All of this prevaricating finally came to a head when we booked to go up to Wildside Lodges at the end of last year. It was a long way to go for four nights: and Fife is handily located almost exactly half way between Wildside and our base in North Yorkshire. Excuse for an extra few nights away found, I immediately got onto scouring Airbnb for a centrally located, dog friendly base.
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East Lomond and Maspie Den
I never fully trust the weather forecast, especially in winter, and keeping an eye on it in the run up to our arrival it was fluctuating wildly. Saturday looked sunny, then rainy, then sunny, then finally sunny in the morning and rainy from lunchtime. The other two days looked similar, so we decided to seize the day and get out for a short hill walk on the Saturday morning: if the weather nose dived we could always turn back.
The Lomond Hills were very close to the top of my list for the trip. Our Pocket Mountains guide had a 6.5 hour grand tour taking in all three of them, as well as shorter routes up them individually. Weather constraints in place, we chose a shorter 2.5 hour route heading up East Lomond via Maspie Den (similar route on Walkhighlands) rather than committing to the full day expedition.
We started our walk from the centre of Falkland, which may be familiar to viewers of the Outlander TV series, where it doubles as Inverness in the 1940s. Making our way through the centre of the town we managed to get lost a few times before finding our course and heading down to the Falkland Estate: this was about as complicated as the navigation got (although we are both pretty rubbish generally at ‘urban’ route finding).
The route heads into Maspie Den, a fantastic wooded valley full of interesting things to look at, not limited to: a stone tunnel, more footbridges than you could count, and a waterfall directly over the path (Four Falls Trail who?). Maspie Den was the reason we picked East Lomond over any other hill – we wanted something interesting lower down so we could bail if needed!
The path rises, sometimes gradually, sometimes not, almost all the way through Maspie Den. It eventually spit us out into a cleared area which led to a car park: clearly, there’s a cheat’s way up East Lomond. Which I would recommend if you’re not massively fit – we both found it harder than expected!
The final climb starts deceptively easily, which lulled me into thinking that we were on but a mere stroll in the countryside. Not so: the last stretch did require much stopping to admire the view. Happily, the rain was still holding off so we did get the view, or at least part of it. There were views across to the coast and West Lomond behind us, although I’m not convinced we could see the Cairngorms or the Trossachs as promised in the guide book.
The wind at the top was fairly brutal so we started to pick our way down pretty quickly. Descending down the other side of the hill is steep and unrelenting: we were both glad we hadn’t come up this way with a long walk back! Soon the hill path drops into a pine woodland where we were met with a seemingly never-ending parade of steps. The steps gave me the start of jelly legs, which evolved into true jelly legs when the steps finished to be replaced by an equally steep slope: my gait could not switch between the two!
As we descended (yet more) steps, my churlishness was lifted by one of those special ‘walking in Scotland’ treats: a red squirrel scampering up a tree. I wasn’t fast enough to snap a photo, so you’ll just have to take my word for it I’m afraid.
Dog friendly rating: 4/5. There are a few sections on this walk which are woodland and suitable to let your dog off lead, and it is also free of stiles and other obstacles. Be sure to keep your dog on a lead on the hillside as you may encounter livestock.
Rained off
No matter where we looked, there was only one word to describe the weather on Sunday: grim. We decided to aim for a chilled day – we were, after all, on holiday. We started the day with a leisurely breakfast at the Balgove Larder: not dog friendly, but with a large secure car park where we could leave the dogs safely in the car. There’s a great cafe here serving breakfast and lunch, as well as a huge farm shop with all kinds of tempting goodies. We couldn’t resist a few bits and pieces and took home some local honey and some less local coffee. It was definitely an exercise in self-restraint not to empty my bank balance!
Perusing our Pocket Mountains guide from the warmth of the cafe, we decided to head to Lochore Meadows Country Park to give the dogs a quick walk, mainly due to the terrain description being ‘suitable for all terrain buggies’. We wanted to try and avoid the dogs getting covered in mud and then coating the inside of our Airbnb in dirt!
Lochore Meadows has several short trails to choose from: a foolproof plan. Foolproof until we got there and thought ‘crikey, there are a lot of dogs in the car park’. Not just any dogs either: dogs of every shape and size, including a small herd of Newfoundlands hitched up to Christmas trailers. And they were all very, very excited, with lots of running around and barking. Turned out we’d arrived in the middle of a canicross event: not where you want to take a reactive dog who’s terrified even of a tiny Shih Tzu minding its own business (our meltdown of the previous day).
Conferring in the car park, we decided a Plan B was needed. We didn’t want a long walk, and it would definitely be very stressful for Coal if we stayed at Lochore Meadows. We hopped back on the road and drove for about 10 minutes to reach Blairadam Forest. There are three way marked trails here, varying in length from 20 minutes to 2 hours. With the rain pelting down and a surprising number of dog walkers here too, we opted for the shortest trail: with a big walk the day before and a big walk planned for tomorrow, we knew that a shorter, less stressful walk for Coal would be better for both of them.
It turns out you can get extremely soggy even in just a quarter of an hour! But it makes getting back home and whacking the log burner on extra cosy.
Tentsmuir
Forecast to be the brightest day of the week, we decided to go for one last wander before heading home on the Monday. Another breakfast at Balgove (because we don’t have anywhere like this to treat ourselves at home) set us up nicely for a 2 hour walk around Tentsmuir. This beach and forest combination is ideal for dog walkers and was a route we found in our Pocket Mountains guide – a similar route (which uses the coast path rather than the beach) is available on Walkhighlands.
Parking at Tentsmuir is £4, payable at a parking barrier about 1km from the main car park. The size of the car park makes me think it might get busy here, but happily it was nice and quiet on a Monday in December. We got the dogs out of the car and immediately made for the dunes to cross to the beach: and here was our main error of the day. Crossing into the dunes opposite our car led to half a kilometre or so of trudging around swampy, marshy lagoon: the main path to the beach from the car park was at the other side of the car park and we’d missed it.
All was not lost, as eventually the coast path we were following branched off to lead to the beach. As a silver lining, it meant that we completely dodged the other dog walkers who’d gone straight onto the beach from the car park. Result?
The sunny day the Met Office had promised never quite materialised, but it was at least dry and not windy. Walking down the beach was lovely and quiet: we saw just one other dog walker coming back the opposite way to us. The final stretch of the beach crosses Tentsmuir NNR, where dogs are required to be on short leads. And I was glad we had put them back on their leads, as not long after rounding the corner we were lucky enough to see a small group of seals basking on the shore. There’s absolutely no way Merry could’ve resisted!
Around the halfway point the walk leaves the beach to return via a good path in the forest. It was nice to have a firm path after walking on sand for a few miles! I’d expected to start seeing more people in the woods but I was pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was: again, this was probably due to the time of year. Despite the somewhat gloomy weather it was a great walk to blow away the cobwebs, and I treated myself to a deluxe hot chocolate from Salt & Pine, a creperie located in the car park. I was wishing I’d known it was there before we arrived and I would’ve saved some space for one of their crepes, instead of filling up at Balgove!
Dog friendly rating: 5/5. Beach and forest, what’s not to love? Although dogs need to be on a lead in the nature reserve part of the beach, it’s a relatively short section of the walk. The walk is also completely free of stiles and other obstacles – perfect.
Where we stayed
We stayed in The Bothy, a cute little apartment between Cupar and St Andrews. It was a fab base for a short break (longer than three nights and I think it would’ve been a little small for us), but for a long weekend it was perfect. All of the kitchen basics and a cosy log burner: just what we needed for what turned out to be a rather dreich weekend. Unfortunately the photo doesn’t quite do the lovely interior decor justice!
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. Two dogs are allowed at £25 each per stay – so it’s a little more than we’ve paid before. The flat is nice and spacious, but the dogs could pace up and down outside the bedroom door whenever they felt like it – we like to have a few closed doors between us and them at night time for this reason! The outdoor garden is huge, but as The Bothy is a first floor flat, you do need to walk your dog down there. It should be noted that the garden area is also shared with another Airbnb next door.
I’m so glad we finally got to Fife – it was long overdue. While the weather wasn’t on our side it didn’t stop us having a great time. We were pleasantly surprised by how much was going on even in December!
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