Always, always, ‘Next Christmas we’re going to celebrate beyond the confines of home, that’s the plan.” And always we dust off the tree, have a heritage turkey (or goose) delivered to the door and I somehow defy frazzling in a long kitchen stint, where I inevitably overcook the roasties… etcetera.

A family commitment for the ages, it won’t be any different this year. Toasts will be raised to missing friends and a special one to Captain Smidge, the gourmet chihuahua, who left us in June 2023. We finally scattered his ashes on his favourite stretch of path above the Colden Valley on my wife’s birthday last summer (Champagne was involved). 

He was always a Christmas dog (yet not just for Christmas). For various festive therapy reasons he suffered being dressed up as Santa or an elf, but we placated  him with chunks of his favourite partridge or pheasant. One Boxing Day on our head-clearing amble to Hebden Bridge a daft whippet off the leash bundled him into the canal. He enjoyed drying off in the pub and being made much of by strangers. He made friends easily.

Which brings us to the East Neuk of Fife. Smidge never made it there. It was made for him. Our stay on that stretch of the Scottish coast was to be the perfect dog-friendly travel writing assignment. Then 10 days before, his 16-year-old heart gave out. We went ahead with our glamping booking outside beautiful Crail with his beautiful ghost by our side over four blazing June days. 

It enabled us to make the most of the Fife Coastal Path, but we wished he could have scuttled by our side. Our favourite spot (main picture, above) was the tip of Ruby Bay – home to the impossibly romantic legend of naked bather Lady Janet Anstruther. Full story to follow!

There’s still much of the 117 mile path to tackle. Now that’s an incentive to return. 

A December up there will inevitably be different. The latest plan, is to celebrate Christmas 2026 in a sea view cottage I’ve got my eye on. In Crail, jewel in this necklace of colourful fishing villages strung along the North Sea coast below St Andrew’s. King James II of Scotland described them as “a fringe of gold on a beggar’s mantle”.

Ideally there would be a log fire… and a couple of local lobsters and South African Chenin Blanc in the fridge. And, of course, the Captain’s spirit will be vividly with us. Ghost of Christmas Always Present (without the costume, I promise, Smidgey). 

Just 10 miles separates Elie (closest town to Ruby Bay) in the south to Crail in the north with buses every hour if you want to walk some of the loveliest stretches of the Coastal Path without doubling back on yourself. Let me introduce you to Crail, Cellardyke and Anstruther, St Monans and Elie/Earlsferry…

A quest for the wholly Crail

This is golfing country. The two courses at the tip of Fife Ness belonging to the Crail Golfing Society, seventh oldest club in the world. It was founded in 1786 by 11 solid citizens in the Crail Golf Hotel, still there on High Street, offering a fine example of the town’s predominant 17th century architectural style, crow-stepped gables, often whitewashed. These, pantiled roofs and mature tree-lined avenues lend a very continental feel to the place. Given a royal charter by Robert the Bruce in 1310, Crail was an important medieval trading post, despatching cargoes of coal, textiles and salted herring to the Low Countries. 

Gaze up at the weathervane above Crail Tolbooth’s Dutch tower and instead of the customary cockerel you’ll find the shape of a ‘Crail capon’. These were haddock smoked traditionally in a chimney ‘lum’. There’s an auld Scot expression “lang may yer lum reek” (long may your chimney burn), wishing you long life. 

Wander down to the sheltered harbour along cobbled streets, taking in the colourful courtyard of Crail Pottery. Or approach via Castle Walk, which gives you the best photo opportunity. At weekends in season Reilly Shellfish Shack will sell you freshly landed and cooked crab and lobster.

Ancient Cellardyke and newbie Anstruther

A storm at the end of the19th century trashed atmospheric Cellardyke’s own harbour, so the herring fleet shifted down to adjacent Anstruther (pronounced Anster). Today the bobbing boats are mostly pleasure craft and there are two terrific tourist magnets. The Scottish Fishing Museum is a hugely informative portal into a life at sea that even today is fraught with peril  We took coffee in its smart cafe as we awaited our morning Sea Safari with Isle of May Boat Trips.  

From £30 a head you get a one hour 15 minute seaborne circuit of this National Nature Reserve, six miles out in the Firth of Forth, with informed commentary from the skipper. The craft, a rigid inflatable, holds 12 and hits some impressive speeds to add a thrill element, but the real reason to visit May is the wildlife. It has a history involving monks, vikings, smugglers and a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s dad, but all play second fiddle when, as we did, you come upon basking seals, a cormorant colony and cliffs teeming with guillemots, terns, razorbills and the uncommon black-backed gull. 

Star of the show, though, has to be the puffin (one collective name an ‘improbabilty’). These colourful, comical birds arrive on the Isle in April and depart by the end of summer; we caught them at their zenith, surfing the choppy waves then upturning into the deep in search of sand eels and the like. In the distance a real bonus – a minke whale briefly cresting the waves.

All that fresh sea air and spume had unleashed the inner gannet in us, so after disembarking we piled into the award-winning Anstruther Fish Bar. The battered haddock and chips were as good as it gets – believe the hype. It’s not the only Premier League chippie in town but, as elsewhere, the tradition is under threat. Read Tom Lamont’s quite brilliant East Neuk-centric long read in The Guardian.

Traditional pubs may be struggling too and in truth this isn’t good cask beer territory, but the Fife Gold was in fine, foamy fettle in the secluded garden of The Dreel Tavern, which dates back to the 18th century. As does so much of Pittenweem, next stop on the trek, the last working harbour.

Pittenweem is a quirky delight

St Fillan had his own version of a phone torch. His left arm mysteriously lit up, allowing him  to accomplish his seventh century holy tasks in his cavern tucked into the rock face off Bruce’s Wynd, the steep descent to the harbour. You pay a quid for a key at the Pittenweem Chocolate Company or The Little Gallery on High Street. St Fillan’s Cave is a mite underwhelming like Father Ted’s Holy Stone of Clonrichert, but overall I liked the understated charm of Pittenweem, a great place to putter around. Life beyond fish and chips? Gentrification on the way? The smart harbour front Dory Bistro and Gallery is one of the Good Food Guide’s 100 Best Local Restaurants.

Or if you just fancy a picnic pick up some cheese from the St Andrews Cheese Company from their farm just outside the town. Their Anster cheese is handmade to a traditional recipe using unpasteurised milk from their Friesian Holstein cows.

Salt of the earth on the way to St Monans

In the 1790S, salt was Scotland’s third-largest export, after wool and fish. Local coal heated the evaporation pans where sea water was boiled into sea salt. At the end of the mile and a half coastal walk from Pittenweem you encounter the St Monans Windmill, used to pump up the water. Almost ancient history now – the industry was abandoned in 1823. The settlement itself takes its name from a 9th century hermit who landed here and built a cell; later a Dominican monastery sprang up and, tucked into the cliffs above the waves, the Auld Kirk (1256) is among Scotland’s most ancient churches. We were keen to see the famous 18th-century model of a ship suspended from its ceiling, but the great door was locked.

The multi-coloured seafront of St Monans proper is very much of today, a perfect seaside retreat. A good place to chill with small plates, coffee and craft beer is the Giddy Gannet, but the real foodie draw is East Pier Smokehouse on the quayside, painted a vivid powder blue. To sit on its top deck terrace with the sea lapping behind you and a large whole lobster to yourself (great value at £50) is crustacean bliss. It comes in a cardboard box with proper chips or potato salad and implements to lever the tastiest bits from crevices. Chef patron James Robb smokes seafood Scandinavian-style in the downstairs kitchen and everything on the menu is desirable, down to the well-chosen wine and beer offering.

Elie – here life really is a beach

What saves St Monans from the crowds is the lack of a beach. Ellie makes up for it with its sweeping demerara coloured strand that attracts the affluent weekenders up from Edinburgh. You can appreciate its vastness from the terrace of the excellent Ship Inn. More sheltered is Ruby Bay on the approach. This was where in the 1770s the beautiful Lady Janet Anstruther indulged in naked bathing from Lady’s Tower on the headland (nowadays a gaunt ruin). A bell-ringer paraded through town to warn ’no peeking’ at this wild swimming pioneer. 

‘Good walk spoiled’ and all that, the town and its extension Earlesferry draw in the golfing crowd to two acclaimed courses. My own personal magnets lie on the A917 coming in – all of them foodie, naturally.

First there’s the top quality Ardross Farm Shop (access also from the Coastal Path), then one of Scotland’s best seafood merchants, David Lowrie, on an industrial estate on the fringe of St Monans – it supplies Manchester’s wonderful new Bar Shrimp – and finally the food and culture complex called wryly Bowhouse.

Rising from flat fields, it resembles a gargantuan barn. The small food and drink businesses occupying spring into life mostly from Thursday onwards, though the impressive organic butchery is open from Tuesday. 

On the second weekend of each month Bowhouse hosts a popular market with traders streaming in from across Scotland, but it is also home to regulars such as the Baern Bakery, Scotland the Bread’s flours and much more. Central to the whole project is Futtle organic brewers They run a taproom, vinyl stall, bottle shop for artisan ciders and natural wine, alongside a catalogue of DJs and performers. They also brew unfiltered beer flavoured with foraged seaweed or yarrow and a green hop pale ale from “fresh, Fife-grown organic hops, which went from the bine into the beer on the same day.” Coolest kids on the Neuk? You got it.

Where to have our Christmas feast if the dream comes true

The best place in East Neuk has to be the Kinneuchar Inn, which recently came in at No.2 in the Good Food Guide’s Top 100 Pubs. This whitewashed 7th century hostelry lies a couple of miles north of Elie. Its logo references the local custom of curling on the frozen waters of nearby Loch Kilconquhar. A much better idea is to curl up in the Inn and enjoy chef patron James Ferguson immaculately sourced, daily changing menu. Seafood, as you’d expect, is a star attraction. They are closed  on Christmas Day but this year’s Christmas Eve menu offers the likes of Chargrilled Inshore Squid & Skordalia, Rotisserie Lamb Leg & Tzatziki or Baked Cod & Roast Red Peppers. Who needs turkey? Well, perhaps Captain Smidge might have preferred it.

For full tourism information on the area visit Welcome to Fife.