The day following Edinburgh Zoo, we took the country lanes to get to Fife and St Andrews. 

We arrived just after noon, having battled against our shared allergies to the swathes of rapeseed we had past. My mum had been given a recommendation to visit The Seafood Restaurant that sits right over the sandy beach so we parked up and walked to the coast.

After a beautiful meal and some lovely wine, we headed down to climb around the rock pools and walk on the beach itself. The last time I had been to the coast was in November so it was lovely to smell the salt air. 

Although it was a tad blustery, we got to enjoy the great expanse of sand. Lots of other people had come to enjoy... well, I won't say warm weather, but it certainly wasn't raining! 

There's an overwhelming feeling of genteel in St Andrews. Not in a snobby, looking-down-on-you kind of way, but in a more educated, polite-society manner that's rather reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel. As such, the place is overrun with Americans.

We happened to arrive as the town was gearing up for The Open, the town's golfing championship. This involved us weaving around bleacher seats and very nearly walking onto the set of an advertisement for Stella Artois that was being filmed as we tried to get up to the town itself.

On the main street, we passed a lot of the university's buildings and wandered into a square where some of the university's dissertations were being displayed, then wended our way to the cathedral.

The cathedral was just as derelict as I had imagined it to be. It fell into ruin after the Scottish Reformation where Catholic mass was outlawed - its alters were stripped, and the north wall eventually collapsed, with a lot of the bricks taken elsewhere. It was only 300 years later, in the 1800s, that any attempt was made to preserve it.