03 Nov Dysart, Fifeshire, Fife
In Walter Scott’s novel Rob Roy, Andrew Fairservice, the loquacious gardener, refers to the kingdom of Fife as ‘just like a great combined city – Sae mony royal boroughs yoken on end to end… Kirkcaldy, the sell o’t, is langer than ony town in England.’ He was mostly right, and indeed there was a touch of prophecy in it: Kirkcaldy, through hardly by itself longer than any English town, is still called ‘the lang toun’.
It ate up the once independent burgh of Dysart in 1930. As with much of the surrounding area, the main industry of this town is which faces Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth is coalmining, with records for the earliest mines going back to 1424. Black stone apart, the men of Dysart once made nails: twelve million of them a year, roughly, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Dysart is a hidden gem with a picturesque harbour, contact Ireland and Scotland Luxury Tours now to organise your visit on your Scotland tours.