Tags
Anstruther, appear, bunker, disappear, Fife, fishing, herring, railway, scotland, virtual journey
Anstruther
Day 12. 85.2 miles.
After another few virtual miles, we appear to be in Anstruther. We’ll be carefull here. Anstruther is a place of mysterious appearances and dissappearances and we don’t want to find ourselves lost.
Take the once thriving herring fishing industry for instance. Anstruther fishermen were delighted on 1936 when, out of nowhere, a record catch appeared. The next year, though, the fish started to disappear and by 1947 they were-to all intents and purposes-all gone. This was no litle deal. The fishing fleet had contained over 1,000 boats. People could walk all the way acrooss the harbour from boat to boat without any gaps. This was a lot of fish! The erosion of the industry didn’t stop the townsfolk building an excellent fishing museum here though, so there is still money coming into Anstruther from fish. Even more if you take into account the local fish and chip shop – the Anstruther Fish Bar.
The Fife Coast Railway used to be a bustling little railway line with 5 daily trains chugging into Anstruther station transporting people and – you guessed it – fish. Another victim of the Famous Anstruther Curse (famous only to us since I just made it up), the first train to use it was never seen again in Anstruther after it proved unsuitable for the steep grades and thrilling curves that the engineer had designed. A strange choice, that engineer, since he was known for designing and building totally impractical railway lines but he was cheap – and came with a knighthood. Never mind that he was held responsible for the collapse of the Tay Bridge that we learned about in an earlier journey. The second train also disappeared when it mysteriously started leaking steam from its cylinders and boilers. Something you don’t want in a steam train, apparently. Following Anstruther tradition, the line was shut down and disappeared in 1965.
Most spectacular of all, though, was not a disappearance, but an unexpected apparition. A secret nuclear bunker miraculously appeared in 1993.
This wasn’t just a little root cellar containing a few jars of pickles and a week’s supply of water. This was a blast-proof concrete monstrosity with enough room to house and feed entire governmental departments for a considerable time if the Soviets rained nuclear weaponry upon Europe. It was disguised – we are led to believe – as a quaint little farmhouse. The bunker is now a museum stocked with equipment from numerous other defunct bunkers around the country.
As a consequence the little village of Anstruther has two museums worth visiting. Whether your interests lie in fishing, hunkering down, or both you can satisfy your curiosity right here!
What staggers our imagination is that despite the huge, noisy construction of a 450 foot tunnel and the removal of tons of earth and rock in the 1950’s, the buildout of 3 tonne blast doors, 2,800 phone lines being installed, furniture deliveries, food stocking, constant upkeep and wholesale renovation in the 1970’s this massive structure remained a total secret until the government informed the public of its existence once it was deemed useless. I wonder whether the first bewildered Anstrutheronians to see the concrete monstrosity right under their noses wondered if that is where all the fish disappeared to.
I don’t want to dwell on the point, but how so folks in a small village not question why one day rush hour is two tractors and the postman on a bike, and suddenly the roads are crammed with concrete mixers and catering trucks. One day the sleepy pub is considered busy if three farmers and a dog show up and the next it runs out of beer every night because of squadrons of surveyors, hod carriers and army officers sporting swagger canes and monocles.
While we could easily spend weeks pondering on the strange magical properties of Anstruther – a town that can lose shoals of fish and entire railways and conceal buildings the size of a couple of football pitches – it is time for us too to dissappear until we reappear – after a mile and a half of virtual walking – in Pittenweem.