Great areas of coast, as well as golf (St. Andrews)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	St. Andrews
Date:	27/06/09 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A compact and interesting old town

Disadvantages: Can look a tad grey and grim in winter

Here's a review about St Andrews the ancestral 'home of golf' that - apart from these two early mentions - promises to contain nothing whatsoever about golf courses.

It's a small town steeped in medieval history situated in the East Neuk of Fife - the peninsula shaped like a dog's head that lies about a third of the way up Scotland, jutting out between the Firths of Forth and Tay. If you look at the map of Fife as if it is indeed a dog's head, St Andrews is situated on the coast about where its eye would be. As well as being famous for the aforesaid ball-and-club based game, it also has Scotland's oldest university (and also one of the country's smallest traditional universities).

The setting is very picturesque. There are two good sandy beaches on either side of the town - the West Sands, which runs for miles - actually, this is slightly to the north and west of the town - and has long linear areas of sand dune, and the East Sands, which is a slightly grottier, smaller beach on the other side, by the town's ancient harbour. This beach is largely bounded by built-up development and in consequence consists of almost no beach at all during spring and neap tides. In the bad old days, the town's sewage outfall used to discharge among the rocks at the far end of the East Sands; despite this the town's beaches used to regularly receive national awards of merit (that on examination, were based on the presence of on-site loos, car-parks, ice-cream vans etc. rather than - as might be expected, cleanliness and water quality); as I haven't lived in the area for years I don't know how things stand water quality wise at present. There is also a pleasant small beach (surrounded by rocky cliffs) that has orange grainy sand in the middle of town, down by the ruins of the Medieval castle. This is called the Castle Beach and it is gateway to huge areas of flat / sloping rocky outcrops, with excellent, deep rockpools. The rocks are very slippery and fully exposed only during very low tides; the usual precautions should be taken if visiting here.

The West Sands beach is famous for being a location for one of the (many) running sequences in the film 'Chariots of Fire'. It is a superb-looking spot, with fine, pale-coloured sand - unfortunately somewhat blighted by being used by amoral dog walkers, as well as cold sea breezes for much of the year. There is a charge for entry by car in summer and as a note of warning, the public toilets that serve the beach are, traditionally, hideous.

Below the East Sands the coast merges into cliffs with rocky beaches and isolated coves. There is in theory a cliff path that can be taken by walkers south from St Andrews and around the East Neuk; parts of this path collapse regularly, hikers occasionally fall off it and so on, thus it is something of a hazardous route. Despite the presence of sandy beaches there are rocky cliffs in the town high enough to hurt yourself off; very sadly, visitors have very occasionally come to (fatal) grief falling from these. The vital message here being to never jump over a wall near the coast in St Andrews if you aren't 100% certain what lies on the other side.

The 'urban district' of St Andrews consist of a grand total of two and a bit shopping streets, all running in parallel with each other: South Street and Market Street have the most shops, and the bit of North Street that I've included has a few small art-type galleries / boutiques. There are also a few smaller shopping streets (Bell Street; Greyfriars' Gardens etc.) intersecting the main streets listed above.

Being a tourist spot, St Andrews is one of those odd towns where it's possible to buy a vast array of decorative objects, clothes and souviners from any number of specialist retailers in the centre of town, but where it can in fact be slightly tricky to get hold of basic household essentials, say, a pint of milk. There is one of those smallish, urban Tescos in the town centre for grocery shopping, but for their 'proper' shop everyone heads to the local Morrisons, or the new 'Aldi' - both of which are about a mile to two miles from the city centre, and in a location relatively close to each other but so tricky for non-locals to find that it won't be worth my attempting to describe it.

What St Andrews also has, in terms of the number of shops per really quite small unit area, is a truly surprising quantity of second hand / charity shops. This has something to do with such shops being partially or wholly exempt from local business rate charges, which are apparently very high in the town, as I understand it. The streets in the main town are small and often terribly congested with traffic and pedestrians - especially around lunchtimes during term-time, when pupils from the local secondary school Madras College disgorge in large numbers into the town centre. In town it's so busy during business hours that there is in practice only limited on-street parking; a parking voucher system operates with 'scratchcard' sytle parking tickets being available from local businesses in the area. Traffic through the town is governed by a fiendish one-way system; there are many unexpected miniroundabouts with zebra-crossings practically on top of them which make things particularly difficult.

If attempting to eat in St Andrews, you should make every effort to avoid the centrally-located cafe / bakery by Martin McColl's newsagent in Market Street because the food is appalling and has been for years: (the name of the business changes regularly - the last names for it I can remember are 'the Light Bite' and / or 'Andrew Kidd'). There is a very good to excellent fish and chip takeaway called Peter Michaels tucked away in a side-street at the end of Market Street; the Kinness Fry Bar, another chippy a short stroll out of the town centre is also a good bet. There is a famous ice-cream seller - B Janetta's at the seaward end of Market Street; the last time I was there I found someone else's hair in my rum n' raisin ice which, when I complained, the proprietors weren't at all fussed about - so on hygiene grounds my advice would be to give that place a miss. There is much, much better and conveniently located ice-cream parlour called 'Luvians' in Market Street by the (dry) fountain which is an excellent bet.

Admittedly there is not a great deal to do in St Andrews itself - apart from shopping, if you don't like golf or ancient monuments - of which the town has several, including - in addition to the ruined castle, a ruined Cathedral, torn down during the Protestant Reformation. You may notice a number of crosses or X-es set into the cobblestones here and there around the town; each marks the spot where (Catholic?) martyrs were burned to death during this period of violent and bloody history; local etiquette is not to stand on them (something to do with failing all your exams if you're a student, or otherwise attracting general bad luck). In terms of attractions there is a Sea Life centre on the beach which is exactly like these types of places always are, and of course walking on the beach itself, which is to be highly recommended.

Summary: Good for a day out or weekend break