There was a dog splayed out in front of a crackling glow in a Ship Inn in Elie. We were during a strand – in a quaintly grand Kingdom of Fife, confronting Edinburgh opposite a Firth of Forth – out of season. Landlord Graham Bucknall poured us a inexhaustible solitaire and tonic (with artisan, Fife-based Eden Mill, of march – where doesn’t furnish a possess solitaire these days?).
“Sometimes there are some-more dogs than people in a bar,” he laughed. “You shouldn’t come here unless your name’s Lassie,” a internal propping adult a bar quipped. You get a gist.
This month, a motel non-stop 6 guest bedrooms – a one on a belligerent building allows dog friends and has been dubbed a Dog Room. Perched on a window chair in my room, we watched a object set as dog walkers zigzagged opposite a dull sand. A integrate of Jack Russells streaked by a spray. we was blissful cave was during home: she’d have been creation her sandy self gentle on a unadulterated white linen.
The Ship Inn has distant some-more going for it than dog bowls, of course. A flip-flop from a shore, it’s prolonged been a internal establishment – though one that had turn a small tattered around a edges until Graham and mother Rachel, owners of the Bridge Inn (the AA’s best Scottish pub 2014) in Ratho circuitously Edinburgh, took it on final year. (They also bagged a circuitously 19th Hole, a country small sports bar unaware a golf course: dual for a cost of one.)
Rachel already knew Elie good – her relatives had a holiday home in a village, where she spent childhood summers, and she and Graham had their initial date here. Together they have remade a pub, remodelling a bar, formulating an upstairs dining area (mismatched chairs, wood-burner – no dogs allowed), with a stylish bedrooms a latest addition. The bedrooms are separate into 3 categories (one Admiral, 3 Captains, and dual as nonetheless unnamed sailors) though all are decent-size doubles. We were in Admiral, with a white-shuttered brook window in a eaves and unconditional perspective of a bay. All though one of a 5 upstairs bedrooms has a sea perspective and complicated touches, such as a peculiar rolltop bath, monsoon showers and espresso machines.
The inn’s colour intrigue is a brew of duck-egg blue and sea green, and a taste is naval all a way, with aged photos of ships, potion buoys and oars on a walls. Rachel scoured antique and junk shops for sea chests and aged suitcases to act as bedside tables, and found a 1855 map of Elie (on a bar’s ceiling) in a library in Edinburgh and had it done into wallpaper.
The motel boasts a cricket pitch, noted out for any match, on a sand. Fixtures are tide-dependent, and games finish after a final wicket – or when a waves comes in. Man of a compare is awarded in a drink garden, a patio above a sea wall with corpulent wooden tables, where they grill in summer. There are also skeleton for beach volleyball and rugby.
The Ship’s food is not in a same joining as a Bridge – it’s some-more robust pub muck – though it champions Scottish seafood. Mackerel and pollock are held off a seashore here in summer, while langoustine, lobster and crab are landed in circuitously Pittenweem harbour. We’d only missed a special – spaghetti alle vongole installed with internal roller clams – though my crony announced her smoked haddock crepe delicious. we was disappointed, however, with my stodgy and tasteless fishcake.
A pretty, rural county, Fife has copiousness to suggest it. The Fife Coastal Path curves along a clifftops from a Forth Bridge in a south to a Tay Bridge in a north, dipping in and out of picture-postcard fishing villages. There’s a Gothic university (St Andrews), unconstrained sandy beaches (remember a opening stage of Chariots of Fire?) and roughly as many golf greens as immature fields. There are big, blowsy US-style golf resorts and Michelin-starred restaurants (the Cellar in Anstruther for a best food in Fife) and posh plantation shops such as Balgove Larder, with a country beef stable and night markets.
Surprisingly, what this area has lacked is a stylish place to stay to stop we hurrying home. The Ship Inn is somewhere you’d wish to linger.
• Accommodation was supposing by a Ship Inn, (01333 330246, shipinn.scot, doubles from £90 BB)
Ask a local
Will Docker owner of Balgove Larder plantation shop
• Eat
In St Monans encampment there is a normal smokehouse with a country grill right on a gulf called a East Pier Smokehouse. Try a easily smoked langoustine with chips and a bottle of rosé.
• Boat trip
The Isle of May, one of Scotland’s inhabitant inlet reserves, is enchanting. It’s a discerning rib float from Anstruther. Take a cruise and suffer a birdlife, including puffins, and monumental views.
• Walk
A good place for a fresh swim, a dog travel or for relaxing among silt dunes in a object is blue-flag Kingsbarns beach, a two-mile brush of silt between Elie and St Andrews.