Buckhaven, West Wemyss, and Dysart harbours .... ......
19th
June 2016 (Sunday)
.... 11.00 Oh this is heat is awfie...we
need the nice wet, cool days, of a normal Scottish summer! I’m overwhelmed with unaccustomed hotness. From that you will have deduced that we
have lovely, humid , abnormal
Scottish
weather this morning; however we do not
need to despair .... there are high, thin clouds beginning to skin over the sky
so I do believe we shall have relief, in the shape of lovely, heavy rain
clouds, which will deposit, their desirable, cooling innards, on us later on
today! Yes we have a bonnie morning
... I’m going to do some work before the rain arrives!
 |
| West Wemyss harbour |
20.30 My day started late ....I overslept
by about 3 hours, and didn’t get activated until 08.50. For some strange reason I managed to do the
jobs I’d planned on doing, but only by skipping going to the kirk! That was ‘naughty’ .... ‘cos it was a
‘coffee after the Service’ Sunday!
However I don’t feel too bad about this as I did get the ‘jobs done, and
had a cuppa with Jimmy, who was feeling a bit stiff this morning.
In
the afternoon I went out on the bike, and ended up at “No 10” (Jimmy’s
residence). Jimmy fancied going out
for a run in the car so I moored up the bike in a more sheltered corner, and we
set orf, heading for coastal harbours westward of Methil, though I
inadvertently missed East Wemyss, but we did do Buckhaven, West Wemyss, and
Dysart. Buckhaven harbour no longer
exists, although it once supported a thriving fishing community. When the locality turned into a coal
producing area, and the pits opened, Buckhaven harbour silted up with rubbish
from the nearby Wellesley Colliery bing.
We went down to the ‘shore’ today, but I was not
impressed with how it
has been redeveloped. It’s not a
‘pretty’ shore line.
 |
| Dysart Harbour slipway |
West Wemyss harbour has been partially filled in, but at least there is still a
‘working’ harbour there, albeit a remnant of what it was. One local fisherman I was talking too said
it should never have been filled in but, apparently a local bairn had drowned
in it and this ‘filling in’ was the answer.
Dysart, although a shadow of its former glory days, is still an
interesting harbour to visit... and it has the Harbour master’s House coffee
shop! In 1943, Jimmy worked on an MTB
that was up on Dysart slipway for repair;
Dysart had the only slipway that could handle a boat of that size. In those days Jimmy remembers seeing the
nuns working in the garden of the nearby Carmelite Monastery. The monastery is still in use.... Jim and I recorded the Chapel there .... but
the trees have grown up in the past 70 years so most of the garden is hidden
from view.... and would be, even from the top of an MTB, if there was one on
the slip! The hand driven capstan that
Jimmy, and the Miller’s men, used to haul the MTB up the slip has been removed,
but we could see where it would have been.
We went for a much needed latte in the Cafe.
The
rain came ‘on’ (and then some) as we left Dysart, but by the time we got back
to
Elie, it wasn’t nearly as ‘heavy’, so I was able to bike home relatively dry.
 |
| Buckhaven shore... East end. |
Although
my ‘day’ began late I have been busy, and will go to bed muchly satisfied, and
tired, tonight. The rain is forecast
to meander orf somewhere else by tomorrow morning so I’m looking forward to a
nice, West wind, kind of day! Did I
write West wind? Yes I did.... I’m fed
up of East winds.
Photographs
: Top – West Wemyss Harbour, Middle – Dysart Harbour slipway, and Bottom – Buckhaven
‘shore’ east end. The West end is more interesting... that’s
where the harbour used to be... so I must go back for a more serious bit of
research.
