The Sun Shines On The Righteous

We travel to the east coast today and ‘The Kingdom of Fife’ to investigate Scotland’s best kept secret for over 40 years. Hidden beneath an innocent Farmhouse a few miles from RAF Leuchars, a tunnel leads to, Scotland’s Secret Bunker. Situated on two levels 100 feet underground it is the size of two football pitches, one on top of another and encompasses 24,000 square feet of Secret accommodation.

The remoteness of the location gives an eerie feel to the place as you travel down a farm road to an innocuous farm which is now littered with abandoned military vehicles which sadly scar the surrounds and blatantly sign post the original objectives of the locale which was kept secret for so many years. On entering the farmhouse you are processed through the obligatory tacky gift shop before paying a kindly and informative local woman at the entrance to a 150m entrance tunnel, before reaching hermetically sealed 3 ton blast proof doors which mark the entrance to the underground structure.

The bunker was constructed in 1954 in response to the ongoing threat of Russia and nuclear war and this is reflected by the exhibits, many of which remain in situ from the time it was constructed but now look outdated in the modern electronic age.
This underground insight of our secret cold war activities provides a fascinating revelation into the levels of paranoia that must have existed at that time and the levels of expenditure that the Government were willing to invest in this perceived threat from the Eastern Block.

On our return to the surface and the 21st Century we continue our exploration of Fife and its coast.
Fife is a peninsular in eastern Scotland bordered on the north by the Firth of Tay on the east by the North Sea and the Firth of Forth to the south. We start our journey by crossing the Tay Bridge into Dundee and then re-cross and take the Fife Coastal Route which runs from The Tay Bridge in the North to The Kincardine Bridge in the South. Our first destination is St Andrews. Famous for being ‘The Home of Golf’, the town was the centre of religious life in Scotland before the Reformation, with the bishops wielding great influence over both church and state. St Andrews is also famous as a place of learning. The university, founded in 1410-11, is the third oldest in Britain. In modern times the alluring but often windy beach was the setting for the famous opening scene of ‘Chariots of Fire’, in which the runners run along the beach bare footed in slow motion with unbearably smug smiles on their faces to the haunting strains of Vangelis’s theme tune. St Andrews on an April Saturday proves to be relatively quiet, peppered occasionally with the ubiquitous over excited American holler of ‘Awesome’ as they overload on medieval history and culture before returning to the Errm ‘Land of the Free’.

From St Andrews we head south along the coast to the picturesque fishing villages of Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem, St Monans and Elie. Where old cottages and merchants' houses, huddle round stone-built harbours where fishing boats lie at rest following the bustle of unloading their catch. Most of these cottages have now left the ownership of the local fishermen and have been acquired by the well heeled of Edinburgh and Dundee. The ever growing presence of Beauty Therapists, Chiropractors and Gastropubs reflects this modern trend.
As we round the south coast peninsular we glimpse the city of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth and eventually the Forth Bridges which traverse it, open up in front of us.

The 1.5 mile Forth Railway Bridge was the world’s first major steel bridge, with its gigantic girder spans of 1710 ft, it ranks as one of the great engineering feats of civilization. Construction began in 1883 and formally completed on 4 March 1890 making it a landmark of Scottish and world renown. Today, the bridge, Scotland’s biggest ‘listed’ building, continues to form a vital artery in Network Rail's East Coast railway system; it carries 180 - 200 train movements per day.

The road bridge is a fairly modern construction in comparison and was built in 1964. The bridge's central main span is 3,298 ft long, its two side spans are each 1338 ft long, and the approach viaducts are 827 ft on the north side and 1,437 ft on the south side; at a total length of 8,242 ft, it was the longest suspension bridge outside the United States and the fourth largest in the world at the time of its construction.

Thankfully, the weather which has been dull and overcast all day suddenly clears and bright skies abound as we set up the camera to capture a panoramic of the two bridges taken from the slipway of the original ferry crossings.

The sun does indeed shine on the righteous ;-)