A Week in the Kingdom of Fife, Part 2 plus

To continue the story...    

Anne with her rally cap on trying to win our match.

Wednesday was a day off from golf: a touring day.  From our castle apartment we made a beeline--at least as straight as we could on the back roads of Fife--for Starbucks in St Andrews.  While having our lattes and sweets we had entertaining conversations, first with a young girl who saw my Nikon D7100 and wanted some advice on camera choices, and second with a girl from Portland who was in her second year at St Andrews University.  The weather, which had been quite showery, started to turn a little better as we drove out to the St Andrews Botanic Garden.  

The fall colors are starting to show.

St Andrews Botanic has a nice hot house section.

Even in late September there were still plenty of blooms to photograph, especially in their themed hot houses.  Next was a visit to one of our favorite golf courses, Crail, in order to book golf for the next day.  While in Crail we stopped for photos in their small harbour.  

Finally, after a walking tour of the village of Kilconquhar, we had dinner in the local pub, the Kinneuchar Inn.  

Good food with the locals.

The golf we had arranged the day before was at the second course at Crail, the Craighead Links.  Anne and I had played the course several years ago and had heard that the course had been much improved.  

Crail Craighead course plays where the Firth of Forth meets the North Sea.

Anne playing the 3rd at Crail Craighead.

We talked to the club secretary and asked if we could check out the improvements.  He comped us today’s round--they really like what I’ve written about their courses.  After golf it was off to another garden; this time the walled garden at Kellie Castle.  

Kellie Castle from the walled garden.

Fruit on the garden wall at Kellie Castle.

Again there was much in bloom to photograph.  Dinner that night was at one of our favorites in the area, the Ship Inn in Elie. 

Lamb shank for me and steak and Guinness pie for Anne.

Our last day in Fife was golf on the most difficult course of this part of the trip.  Lundin GC along the Firth of Forth is another Open qualifying course. 

One of the toughest holes at Lundin plays around the trees.

The course is long, the holes are tricky, and the wind seemed always to be in your face.  Often Anne had to hit over more gunk (marram grasses, heather, gorse, and other nasty stuff) than even her best shots could reach.  This was exhausting golf.  I had enough energy after golf to walk out on the Lundin Ladies‘ course 

Lundin standing stones on the Ladies' links.

to photograph the three large (13 feet tall) ancient (about 4000 years old) standing stones in the middle of the second fairway.  The rest of the day was spent packing for our move to the Highlands.  But that’s fodder for the next post.  

Our Encounters with Tegenaria Gigantea. 

      We've seen them before and don't like them.  They're large and they're fast.  Twice on this trip--at the B&B in Stonehaven and our time share in Ballater (Highlands)--we've had face to face confrontations with Tangenaria duellica (or gigantea) aka the Scottish house spider.  

They aren't poisonous, but they are 1-1/2 to 2 inches across.  For a common house spider they are uncommonly fast and tend to run straight at you.  With a great deal of to-do and screaming, we dispatched both of our adversaries.  If you count the legs in the photo you will see that you there are only seven; we found the eighth on the bathroom floor in the B&B from our first attempt on its life the night before.  Give me a slow, plodding Black Widow any day.