Fife Pilgrim Way - Part 1B - North Queensferry to Dunfermline

Fife Pigrim Way - Part 1B

The Fife Pilgrim Way gives you the choice of starting at either Culross or North Queensferry before coming to Dunfermline, then on towards St Andrews. 

North Queensferry to Dunfermline

One of my favourite views in Scotland is of the Firth of Forth, looking out over the now three bridges crossing the river at Queensferry. I have been travelling back and forth (apologies) over the bridges for years, more frequently since I married a Fifer 20 years ago. The elegance and drama of the Forth Rail Bridge's red girders makes it one of the wonders of the modern world. However, before there were any bridges here it was a treacherous crossing.

North Queensferry and the Forth Rail Bridge

Queensferry, "The Ferry" or South Queensferry. Whatever you call it, the town that sits here on the southern bank of the River Forth takes its name from Queen Margaret, Scotland's only Royal Saint. Margaret of Wessex was an English princess born around the year 1045 in Hungary before her family returned to England. She was the daughter of Edward Æthelred, known as Edward the Exile. Not long after returning to England she and her family fled again, to Scotland after the Norman conquest of  England in 1066. With an arrow in his eye, the death of King Harold meant that her brother was next in line to the throne, a claim rejected by William the Conqueror. She sailed from Northumbria and her family arrived, as refugees I suppose, on the Fife coast near to where Rosyth now sits. In 1070 she was married to King Malcolm III and came to live in his royal residence in Dunfermline, Fife. 

Beauty and the beast? Joseph Noel Paton's arcadian rendering of Queen Margaret and Malcolm III

She is oft described as being a pious Roman Catholic who spent a lot of her energy modernising Scottish worship, moving it away from its Celtic Christianity roots and more in line with the continental practices of contemporary Rome. She may also have introduced the Anglo-Saxon language to court, replacing Gaelic. Pilgrims were already travelling to St Andrews to visit the relics of the saint there, and she established the "Queen's Ferry" across the River Forth to facilitate their journeys. Like Culross, St Andrews had been a place of worship since the 8th century, and Margaret now created a religious community at Dunfermline. She invited the Benedictine Order to establish a monastery here, and soon there were numerous religious settlements in the area; the Cistercian monasteries at Culross and Balmerino, the Benedictine abbey at Dunfermline, a Franciscan friary at Inverkeithing, the Augustinian priories at St Andrews, Loch Leven, Inchcolm and Pittenweem. Over this period numerous religious houses were established in Fife.

Margaret herself used a shrine in a small cave on the banks of Dunfermline's Tower Burn in which to pray. In 1962 the local council decided to fill in this valley in order to create a public car park, but local opposition meant that access to the cave, which I think we can safely call a grotto, was preserved. In 1990 a rather functional access tunnel was created down to St Margaret's Cave, which can be visited in the town centre if you can manage the 87 steps (free to access from Spring to Autumn). If you start descending the stairs don't be put off by thinking you have accidentally arrived at a nuclear bunker, keep going and you'll get there - just don't build your hopes up too much for a religious epiphany at the bottom. Instead you will find a robe-clad mannequin of the good lady contemplating the ceiling of her nook.

Steps down to St Margaret's Cave

Sculpture of St Margaret in her cave

Margaret died in Edinburgh Castle in 1093, three days after hearing of her husband's death at the Battle of Alnwick. After her death she was buried at Dunfermline Abbey and her grave became a place of pilgrimage, with many people praying at her graveside for cures from sickness. Many miraculous healings were recorded and in 1250 she was canonised by Pope Innocent IV and her body moved to a shrine at the abbey. After the destruction of Dunfermline Abbey in The Scottish Reformation her body was smuggled abroad by the Jesuits (although St Margaret's Church in Dunfermline has a bit of her shoulder as a relic). Now many religious buildings around Scotland carry the name of St Margaret. Nothing now remains of her shrine at Dunfermline Abbey. After the church was rebuilt as a Protestant, Church of Scotland church this very Catholic shrine was left on the outside, but it's site is marked by a small plaque. 

Former shrine to St Margaret in Dunfermline

North Queensferry to Inverkeithing

So to take up the route of the Fife Pilgrim Way from North Queensferry we need to start at the old pier, which was built hundreds of years after the time of Queen Margaret. The Rail Bridge was opened in 1890, but it wasn't until 1967 that the ferry was put out of business by the Forth Road Bridge, which had opened in 1964. Travelers in the Middle Ages arriving in North Queensferry could come a couple of streets back to visit St James's chapel, which was run by the monks of Dunfermline Abbey from at least 1320. St James was a patron saint of pilgrims. The now ruined chapel, lies in ...Chapel Place where it has been used as a graveyard by local sailors since 1752 according to the plaque on the wall here.

North Queensferry, Chapel Place

The path follows the Fife Coastal Path to Inverkeithing, under the spans of the rail bridge and then along the coast for a mile or so.

Forth Rail Bridge overhead

Looking across the River Forth

Arriving in Inverkeithing of the Middle Ages weary travelers would find a comfortable resting place at the Franciscan Friary here. This large, late 13th century "hospitium" survives remarkably intact, with a well in the garden at the back. As well as housing the friary, the town was a port and a market town, trading sheep, cattle and animal products. From the 1820s until the 1930s there was much activity at the whinstone quarries near the town, cutting stone that was used for Leith and Liverpool Docks, London pavements and the Forth and Clyde Canal. Other local employment could be found in paper making, ship building and coal mining - three industries now all but vanished from the area.

Coming into the town you pass a rather empty looking dock, a scrapyard, and the old quarry. You then come to a nondescript patch of land, called Witchknowe Park ("witches hill"). Inverkeithing has a sorry history as a "hotbed of witch-finding and punishing". Now much reduced in size, this park was reportedly the field where dozens of alleged witches were burnt alive in the 17th century. Between 1621 and 1652 the local church records report at least 51 cases, mostly women, convicted and executed for witchcraft in this town (despite having a larger population, Kirkcaldy executed 18 people in this same period according to this Scotsman article by Chris McCall) . 

Wtchknowe Park, Inverkeithing

The Hospitium in Inverkeithing

Inverkeithing High Street, with the 14th century church at the top

Inverkeithing to Rosyth

A lack of signposts for the Fife Pilgrim Way over the next wee bit, and wrong data on some of the GPX files available online means that a good old fashioned map can be handy here, but the route takes you out by Hill Street and then over the M90 and across the B890, or Castlelandhill Road as it is called. Castlelandhill? I can't see no castle? Well if you didn't know about it, there is nothing here to tell you, but you are about to walk across Fife's bloodiest battlefield.

The Battle of Inverkeithing on 21st July 1651 saw Oliver Cromwell's English Parliamentary forces pave the way for his conquest of Scotland, against an army of Covenanters and Royalists fighting under the flag of Charles II. With the heart of Scotland fortified south of Stirling, Cromwell realised that if he swept quickly into Fife he could march towards Perth and cut off Scottish supplies and reinforcements from the north. The Scottish forces were 4500 strong on the higher ground at Castleland Hill above Inverkeithing, near to where a similar sized force landed with Cromwell below. Wary of Scottish reinforcements arriving, Cromwell's troops quickly advanced, and despite initial successes for Scottish cavalry the Scots were soon forced back to Pitreavie Castle, sustaining heavy losses in the retreat. 800 men under Maclean of Duart held out for 4 hours on the slopes near the castle, but eventually all but 35 of these men were killed. A cairn in Pitreavie, just by a mini-roundabout on Castle Brae commemorates these men. By the end of the day 2000 Scots had been killed and a further 1600 taken prisoner. Much of the battlefield now lies under roads and housing estates, and if I hadn't read about the area before running along this way today I would not have known about it at all. Surprising, given the brutality of the fighting that day - perhaps we are not so good at remembering defeats. The open fields up here now give views back across to the bridges for the last time, as we head down towards Rosyth.

Forth Road Bridge and Queensferry Bridge from Castleland Hill

Rosyth shipyard in the distance, with the Goliath crane used to construct the aircraft carriers here

Rosyth to Dunfermline

Fife Pilgrim Way signpost

Rosyth as a town was created in 1909, as a dockyard town. The naval dockyard was built at the time of a mounting arms race with Germany. Much of the work the dockyard has had is in refitting ships and in ship-breaking, from the salvage of many of the German naval vessels scuttled at Scapa Flow, to its more recent role in attempting to decommission nuclear submarines. For the past few years the yard has been kept busy in constructing the new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, HMS Queen Elizabeth, and HMS Prince of Wales (there are no immediate plans to build an HMS King Charles III).

Wilson Way, Rosyth

Rosyth FC

The Fife Pilgrim Way comes west along Ferry Toll Road, above a part of the coast called St Margaret's Hope, which may have been where the fleeing future queen landed in Scotland. The route then turns up Wilson Way and cuts through a park where Junior Football club Rosyth FC play. Skirting around their pitch the path heads north towards a busy A-road, heading west along a narrow path beside this road for half a mile before crossing over and going north towards Dunfermline. The first thing you come to, hidden among the trees here, is the isolated, and beautifully maintained Douglas Bank Cemetery. As you would expect, with Rosyth being a naval town, there is a naval plot here, with over 130 burials of people who died in the First and Second World Wars. 

Douglas Bank Cemetery in Autumn 2019

The path goes through a short forest here and then across some open fields before arriving at the southern end of Dunfermline. Heading towards the centre takes you past a cricket club and rugby club at McKane Park, before you arrive at the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum and the abbey.

Whether you started the Fife Pilgrim Way in either Culross or North Queensferry, it now heads east out of town, passing East End Park, home to Dunfermline Football Club.... 

Fife Pilgrim Way Links

• Part1A - Culross to Dunfermline - from Culross to Torryburn, Cairneyhill and onto Dunfermline

• Part 1B - North Queensferry to Dunfermline - North Queensferry to Inverkeithing, Rosyth and then Dunfermline

• Part 2 - Dunfermline to Lochore - from Dunfermline to Kingseat, passing Hill of Beith, past the lost village of Lassodie to Kelty and Lochore

• Part 3 - Lochore to Markinch - Lochgelly to Lochore, then through Kinglassie and along the River Leven to Leslie, Glenrothes and Markinch

• Part 4 Markinch to Ceres - Markinch via Widygates and Kennoway and then on past Clatto Reservoir to Ceres

• Part 5 Ceres to St Andrews - Ceres, Craigtoun and then to St Andrews on the coast

• Fife Coast and Countryside Trust
• Walk Fife
• Fife Pilgrim Way Facebook page
• Welcome to Fife
• Long Distance Walkers Association
• British Pilgrimage Trust