Arriving at St Andrews on Saturday May 7 a few hours later than planned, we went direct to the hostel where Ann’s brother John has been a resident for the past ten years or so, and we were very pleased to find him somewhat better than we had expected. But his Parkinson’s is progressing, and he is certainly more frail than when we were last here, and as it was by now quite late in the evening, we did not stay too long, but went with our niece, Gill, back to her place at Cupar where we would be staying for the few days.
Over the course of the next few days, we were able to borrow a wheelchair through the local branch of the Red Cross, and take John out into the town. Whilst his short term memory was fragile, John was very good at navigating the way through the streets of St Andrews to find his favourite coffee shops! On this first outing we had not strapped John in securely because when we got him into the chair, we found he was sitting on the seat belt, so we decided to do without it, rather than haul him out to retrieve the belt. I felt somewhat concerned as we bounced him along over the cobbles and other unevenness’s in the pavements, but fortunately we did not bounce him out of the chair, and John himself was so pleased to be out, he was quite unconcerned about the perils we had put in is way. And we easily found all three of his favourite cafes, under his expert navigation whilst we were there. On the second outing, we did strap him in, but on our return to the hostel, we tried to get him out of the chair having forgotten to undo the belt. By the third outing, we were getting pretty good at the whole exercise.
As well as taking John out, and cooking him a couple of meals as a change from the Meals-on-Wheels service, we also managed to find some time to do some exploring on our own, finding the cheese shop we had visited on a previous visit, and also finding a second excellent cheese shop the existence of which, we had no idea.
We also found an excellent bookshop where I managed to purchase the book entitled Sir Henry Neville was Shakespeare: The Evidence. Now I am by no means a Shakespeare scholar, but I do enjoy the plays, and I was aware of the various theories as to the identity of the Bard, all of which I treated with a high degree of scepticism. So having heard about this book, and it having been suggested that it is the definitive evidence on the identity of the author of the plays and sonnets we all believe to be William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon, I could not pass up the opportunity of buying a copy. Thus far, I have had very little spare time for reading, and have only managed to read the first few introductory pages, which have largely recapitulated the reasons why it could not have been Shakespeare himself. I shall forbear commenting further, until I have read more of the book.
We also took a walk along the first hole of the Old Course to the Swilken Burn, but as we have been here before, took no photographs this time. (See Travel Blog; July 22 to July 27 2012 for descriptions of previous trip to St Andrews). We wandered around the old ruined castle, and the harbour, and sat for a while on a seat overlooking the sea, like a couple of old pensioners!
As already mentioned, we were staying with our niece at Cupar, in her small cottage set on the top of a very windy hill, in the middle of farmland. The views across the fields down to the town are very attractive, and one can see why Gill loves her cottage so much—even though she does not drive, and has to walk up the very steep hill to get home! Cupar is a fairly unremarkable town, but it does have a very nice river-side park, an excellent patisserie, and a superb bistro, Café Montmartre, run by a French man. We dined there one evening with Gill, and the moules marinières entreé and the confit de canard main dish were excellent.
We took a cross-country drive to the small village of Crail, which claims that its harbour is the most photographed harbour in Great Britian. It is certainly a very pretty harbour, and you can find my photograph of it in an earlier blog (if you would like to!).
And that is about all we did in Scotland this trip! The next blog with be Travelling South!
Slingsby's Miscellany 
Lovely photos once again Brian and yummy descriptions of food!