Fife – The ‘Wee Kingdom’
Fife, the very essence of Scotland, can have no finer introduction than through its principle gateways over the Firths of Forth and Tay, spectacular passage for centuries by boat, today by bridge. Scenic delights and altars to the nineteenth and twentieth century bridge builders’ skills. They take us by both road and rail to two of Scotland’s best estuaries. Fife’s hills are small, solid and often conical, the highest in Fife – West Lomond measures some 522m and East Lomond measures 448m, collectively they are known as The Paps of Fife.
The title of ‘Kingdom of Fife’, an imaginative misnomer much favoured by Fifers and romantics perhaps evolved when Fife and Kinross was a Pictish sub-kingdom. Or did the royal patronage of the Houses of Canmore and Stewart, for Dunfermline, St Andrews and Falkland, raise the stakes?
Medieval Fife prospered, being rich in minerals, producing bountiful harvests from land and sea and also as Scotland's ecclesiastical and academic centre. As it did during the Industrial Revolution, thanks to its innovative mining techniques powering the manufacturing industries. Such expansion was aided by the advent of the steam train, the Forth and Tay bridges and the ingenuity and endeavour of its people, but damned by Scotland's collier serfdom, although not all coal owners practice colliery bondage. In recent times coalmines, bar one, and other traditional heavy industries, have worked their last shift, fortunately replaced by an eruption of electronics, information technology, aluminium smelting and offshoots in the North Sea oil and gas.
This section of the travel will take you through her Fife's key areas, revealing its unique character and its eccentricities. Scroll down the ‘Other Regions’ to explore what the beautiful Kingdom of Fife has to offer. |
