St Andrews, and the AA

St Andrews is lovely with Georgian houses down the main street, though the town is much older. We headed for the golf course. It's still a public course, anyone can play, though you'd have to be pretty confident with your first drive as the outgoing and returning players perform in front of quite a few golfers and even more tourists! There were little rollers coming in on the sandy beach and it was sunny but quite blowy.

Nick at St Andrews

We drove down to the ancient little harbour and out in to green farmland on a beautiful sunny evening. Down the coast to the prettiest place called Crail, mellow brick soft-edged houses with colourful flowers outside – a great contrast to the sharp, grey humourless houses in many villages we have passed through, with few flowers and too much gravel.

Anstruther was the same, charming and faintly Cornish. We were heading now west along the north of the Firth of Forth. Suddenly at about Leven or Methill it becomes grey and plain again. We got as far as Kirkcaldy and, as time was pressing and we had booked ourselves into a campsite near the airport, we headed north to pick up the A92 for a quicker journey.

The campsite was perfectly comfortable, but in the morning disaster struck. I opened the 'bathroom' door and the small square of carpet was floating in waste water! It was coming through the shower drain because I had been too slow to empty the waste water tank, and it was backing up. (Be assured this is nothing to do with the Thetford Cassette toilet... waste water is from washing and washing up. But still not nice.) Quick, I said, we must move to the waste water disposal point – over there (50 metres away).

As the dirty water slopped around in the bathroom, we set off across the campsite. Baa started, choked, spluttered and then stalled. I tried her again – she started, then stopped and stalled again. My limited car mechanical knowledge told me the fuel wasn't getting through. Two kind men pushed us to the waste water point. 

The AA man, Nick and two more helpful men

The AA man soon arrived and put Baa right. He found a temporary seal for the fuel filter until I could get to a garage, and all was well. Bless Baa for not collapsing on us in one of the far-flung places we have been in the past few days, or on the side of the motorway. Nick got to the airport, but didn't get in to Edinburgh.