In the footsteps of my father

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We had thought that the parking attendants in this city did not sleep in and how right we were.
Over the weekend RR has enjoyed a free space on the side of the road adjacent to our home but from 8.30am today she either has to be on the road heading for our sightseeing for the day or she has to have a sticker in the window showing we have paid for her to be there.
Now if there are any parking attendants reading this please do not think that I want to
It is just that your counterparts in Edinburgh appear a rather officious lot.It might be the peaked cap that they wear as part of the uniform that gives them a likeness to a certain regime that dominated in Europe during the 1930's and to the mid 1940's.
Anyway we were on the ball and ensured RR would not be caught out and she got the sticker she needed to hold us over until we had had breakfast and hit the road in the footsteps of my father.
Where my Dad actually grew up and lived has been shrouded in some mystery to me and I now regret not having asked him more about his past before he died.At the time I was growing up I never considered that one day I would want to know more about his early years.My girls know where I grew up and the kids I used to be friends and play with and the schools etc I went to and we have driven past them often when we have been in Wellington.
Our family background was in the Angus and Fife regions of Scotland and it was here we were going to be rambling today to see the towns and area for ourselves.
Gretchen also has connections to this area with her ancestors coming from the Dundee and in particular Broughty Ferry where in 1851 an Anderson (banker of Dundee)built a fine home called Mount Rosa and we hoped we might find it on our travels today.
When you look at the map of Edinburgh it is a maze of main roads that could take you out to the highways in all four directions of the wind.
With Gretchen driving(after last Friday I thought I had better let her do most of it)I was the navigator and thought that a route out to the coast which we would then follow to get to the Forth Bridge about 15 miles out of the city.The map showed there was a main road we could follow past Leith(which is where the port is) and avoid the downtown area.
How wrong my judgment was and over an hour later and after having to drive through the city we finally made the Forth Bridge and the M90 north.While we were on this tiki tour Gretchen,who remember was driving and therefore concentrating on traffic,suggested several times that I get the city map of Edinburgh out and check where we were.However it is difficult trying to flaten out a 3ft x 3ft map in the passengers seat of a small car!!!
Never mind we saw a good part of the city and reinforced our understanding of why Dunedin in NZ is likened to Edinburgh if only for the suburbs with the same names!!
The plan was to take the backroads north and see what was on the way as far north as Arbroath and then head home on the M90 when our sightseeing was done.
So once we had crossed the huge and very impressive suspension bridge built in 1964 over the Firth of Forth we joined the A921 to drive up the coast of Fife.
The weather over the city we had left behind was looking ominous but ahead was sunshine and the road travelled through small towns with names like Aberdour and BurntIsland(not sure where they got that one as it was a pretty little town,except for the port area)giving fine views out over the Firth of Forth back to Edinburgh,now seemingly in rain showers.
On we drove through Kirkcaldy and at Lower Largo because time was marching on we took the A915 inland to.......yes you guessed it.......Upper Largo!!What impressed us was that the land here being flat was also very fertile with crops of all sorts being grown.The Scots love their potatos and there were huge areas of them in flower.
Lunchtime stop was St Andrews and we pulled into a carpark where we could have our lunch,watch the ocean and also watch over the golfcourse where the great game of golf was invented or at least given the start to rise to what it is today.
We also took in the old cathedral and castle as part of our Historic Scotland passes.Not a lot is left of either structure but both had had a colourful and interesting past as part of the Scottish heritage before the English came north in numbers and ruined it all.
It was only a short drive onto Dundee and we arrived at the city via another long and impressive bridge over the Firth of Tay.
My father had talked a lot about Dundee and my guess is that he lived in the city at some time.He also talked about the seaside suburb called Broughty Ferry and it here that we drove onto also seeking Gretchens connection of Mounta Rosa.We didn't have the address so finding it would be a chance thing if it happened.
Broughty Ferry is a pleasant seaside location and it had the bunting out over the main street as it was fair week in the park next to the beach.It had been a while since I had had an ice cream and we kept passing kids with ice cream cones of all varieties.So we followed their trail and found a shop doing a roaring trade at GBP1.50 each.Gretchen opted for her usual flavour of chocolate(she needs to be more adventurous)while I spied the Kiwi flavour and enjoyed the taste of home!!
Whoever said NZ ice cream was the only one worth eatinmg...Scottish is not too bad either!!
We left Broughty Ferry not finding the Banker of Dundees'house and took the A92 to Arbroath.
This was the town my father most spoke of and for years he was a proud supporter of their soccer team which in those days alternated between the 1st and 2nd divisions of the Scottish League(pre Premier League days).
The football ground is one of the main features you come across as you enter the sleepy fishing town.I can now understand why games have been abandoned here in the winter as the small stadium is right ion the waterfront and its not hard to imagine what it would be like when a North Sea fog rolls in!!!
Parking was free in Arbroath so we made use of it and walked the main street.What was evident was that there were many shops that had closed down and were vacant and the town had the feeling of the recession probably more than anywhere we had experienced.
From the way my father talked about it the town had been a prosperous place back in the 1920's and 30's when the fishing in the North Sea had bought riches to the town.
We brought a birthday card for my sister Dannielle and posted it hoping that it would have an Arbroath postmark.Alas the clerk informed me that all the mail is now sorted and stamped in Edinburgh and it would that city's stamp that would be on the envelope.Oh,well D I tried!!!
My father also talked about other towns like Coupar Angus and Kirriemuir but we were running out of time and they would have to keep for the day when we head north to do some touring of this fine country.
We did have one more stop though and that was at the locality that bears our name................yes,we do have a town.....or was that a village.......no,it was just a locality called Benvie.
Located just south of Dundee off the busy A90,Benvie features on a large road sign with several other locality names directing traffic off the highway to an underpass to access the localities.What we didn't realise was that we actually had to rejoin the highway in the northerly direction to get back to Benvie.We missed the sign and had to do a three point turn to get back on track.
We followed the road towards the hills and after about 1km there was the sign proudly proclaiming that we had reached Benvie.
Now both our girls have been here before,Erin and Brent on a cold winters day without a car and risking their lives crossing the highway in light snow and Leigh at a later time.
There isn't much here and really it is just a locality that probably got the distinction of having its own name because there was probably once a church here along with the small collection of 5 houses that remain.The church is long gone and the graveyard is overgrown with trees and headstones in a bad state of repair indicating that whoever is buried here no longer have relatives that come to care for the gravesites.We looked over the headstones in case there was a long forgotten relative with our surname buried but didn't find anyone.
We had parked RR off the narrow road,which was just as well as there seemed to be a lot of through traffic in the 30 minutes or so we spent there.A guy that looked like a farmer was at the end of the lane leading to his house and we think he had been down to see who had parked a car in their lane.We don't think that Benvie gets many sightseers.If only he knew ................................................
It had been a long day of sightseeing and so we took the M90 back to Edinburgh to arrive just in time for another dose of Coro St(we have missed it over the last week so we need to catch up on th storyline).
It had been a day of following in the footsteps of my father and Gretchens Scotish connections and so a very satisfying day and like our pilgramige to Crete and Athens more of the mysteries of the past that this adventure is all about can be put to behind us.

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Comments

[Chris]

Navigation
Before our brief excursion into Italy in 2001 I said to my three navigators "If you are coming with me you need a sense of humour and a sense of adventure". That way we saw a lot of Italy even if we didn't mean to. I hope you two are enjoying each others' company in spite of tricky navigations. Enjoy the adventure.

[Leebee]

Busy in Benvie?
I cant imagine it being busy in Benvie....we were there are Easter and we just abondoned the car by the sign and took a walk....Cormac even lay down in the middle of the road to take a picture of Hoofy and the sign! Wait until you get to Italy.....icecream heaven!!!!