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All sorts of of nonsense is said, thought and written about the Scottish culinary experience. The deep fried Mars bar is ridiculed, yet it used to be served at the New Club, the most exclusive gentleman's club in Edinburgh. Haggis is supposedly more awful than offal and stovies
are just third-day leftovers.
Where there can be no dispute is fish and chips. Scotland, from John
O'Groats to Dumfries, does fish and chips with style.
And no establishment does it better than the Anstruther Fish Bar.
These fish and chips are award-winning and with good reason; the
batter is light, dry and crunchy and, crucially, the fish are pulled out of the sea the morning you eat them. In the summer, the queues for these
legendary tasty morsels wind through the narrow streets of Anstruther.
And the thing about Anstruther, as you will note as you wait in the
hour-long line for the chippie, is it is just one of the many little gems hidden away in Fife, the region north of the Firth of Forth which peers across the water at Edinburgh and the East Lothian coastline.
Fife is something of a hidden secret in Scotland, outside of the golfing set who make pilgrimages to nearby St Andrews.
It tends to be a place visitors stumble across by chance, then wish they had more time to spend there.
By chance means visitors tend to head to Leith in Edinburgh, see another land mass across the firth and decide to explore.
Anstruther is clearly one little fishing village well worth the visit. Once armed with your fish and chips, there is an idyllic harbour to take in; the perfect spot to simply sit and get the feel of how life used to be, free of hustle and bustle.
The biggest village in the area, known as the Nuek of Fife, Anstruther has, not surprisingly, its roots in the sea - it was built on fish and a
visit to the Scottish Fisheries Museum on the promenade will reveal
the village's origins thoroughly.
The life of a fisherman was not easy. These parts can be wild, the seas rough, the hours long and the money hardly good. But maybe by way of compensation for such a bleak professional life, Fife's fishermen brought some Mediterranean influence to their home lives.
All along the Nuek there are traditional cottages splashed with outlandish colour.
There are several other fishing villages also worth taking in - Pitten weem, Crail and St Monans being the most popular - but one not to be missed is the truly gorgeous Elie, the preferred holiday spot for Edinburgh's New Town Set. It's easy to see the attraction and for a moment think you've been transported to the coast of Spain.
Here, there are miles and miles of sandy beaches sweeping out along the Neuk. There are golf courses - Fife boasts more courses per head of population than any other region in the world - and gentle summer seas for sailors and surfers.
This brings us back, of course, to the jewel in the Fife crown - St Andrews.
Famous as the home of golf, St Andrews was originally Scotland's religious centre. Legend has it St Rule was told by an angel to take the "relics" of St Andrew to "the ends of the Earth".
When he was shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland, he apparently felt it fit the description of "ends of the Earth" quite well, so he stayed put and the community of St Andrews grew up along the shore.
The religious past is still very evident in the impressively preserved remnants of St Andrews Cathedral. St Andrew is Scotland's patron saint and his national day is celebrated every November 30.
While the town slowly lost its influence as the traditional religious centre of modern Scotland, it reinvented itself as the home of Scot land's new religion: golf.
Rather than churches and abbeys, modern Scots observe their religion on 18 holes and nowhere in the world has a course like St Andrews. It's the depth of its history and emotional significance that make it special.
And you don't even need to play it to feel you have experienced it. Avid golf followers can walk down the first fairway to the Swilken Bridge, made famous by the number of iconic golfers who have stood on the tiny stone crossing to acknowledge the crowds that flock to St Andrews every five years for The Open Championship.
If you keep walking, you reach the Road Hole - the 17th on the Old Course and arguably the most famous in golf. Take a look in the bunker, play an imaginary shot from behind the green, or just replay memories of Seve Ballesteros standing there in 1984, his fist pumping after doing the unthinkable and scoring a birdie.
If golf isn't your thing, cross the 18th fairway to the beach and re-enact the opening scene from Chariots of Fire, which was filmed there.
St Andrews and the Neuk are the gentile side of Fife. If you drive to Edinburgh - about an hour from Anstruther - you can wind through the grittier parts of the Kingdom. Places such as Glenrothes and Methill, whose past is industrial, or the little known village of Carden den, the birthplace of Ian Rankin's fictional detective John Rebus.
Fife is a microcosm of Scotland, an eclectic mix of history, culture and culinary experiences. On November 30 Scots celebrate all they have and all they give, quite confident that the bloke who washed up on St Andrews all those years ago hadn't found the ends of the Earth.
He'd found the epicentre.
Gregor Paul travelled to Scotland courtesy of Emirates and Visit Britain
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
