Dunfermline and West Fife

Floating Bob and the Forgotten Mansion: the story of Valleyfield Woods

If you go down to Valleyfield Woods in Fife you’ll find a charming woodland with twisting walks, a tumbling burn and, in spring, carpets of snowdrops and bluebells. Look closer however and you’ll find that you are walking in the ghostly footprint of a very different environment – once so vividly present and now almost entirely vanished. A fine classical mansion stood here, grand enough to cast Downton in the

The perfect Italian loaf – baked in Crossgates, Fife

Jock Sharp has slept for just four hours in the last two days. We caught up with  the joiner turned baker on Sunday at the Walled Garden near Kincardine and heard how the wonderful real breads he and his wife Fiona make at their bakery in Crossgates have found such an enthusiastic audience among the bread connoisseurs of Fife that the pair have to work flat out to keep up

Fresh Air Festival is on this weekend in Dunfermline!

Not quite Coachella or the Commonwealth Games but perhaps a little bit of both! The Fresh Air Festival returns this Saturday to Dunfermline’s Public Park. The park’s Victorian bandstand will ring out once more to the sounds of jazz, brass, pipes and some of the area’s best young singer songwriters. There’ll be pony rides, sports taster sessions, including parkour and karate, a family barbecue and birds of prey. New for this

Look inside the new Dunfermline Museum

Take a look inside Dunfermline’s new £10.8m museum and art gallery by way of this flythrough video.  The museum has been funded by Fife Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust and aims to integrate a modern design with the listed buildings on site including the world’s first Carnegie Library. The facility will open in July 2016 and be managed by Fife Cultural Trust. With Dunfermline’s iconic 1930s fire

Dave does Dunfermline: latest Scotland in Detail

Introducing ‘Dunfermline’, the latest in journalist David Cowan’s popular Scotland in Detail series. You can check out the other featured towns here. The colourful posters are printed on quality A2 paper and cost £50 each including post and packaging. The Dunfermline poster is a limited edition A3 size and costs £40. Queries and orders should be sent to info@scotlandindetail.com.

A Village Affair – a shop full of treasure in Townhill, Dunfermline

Any shop that welcomes you and your dog in out of a rain and thunder storm and is happy for you to drip water all over the place as you look around is ok in our book. Other than this kindness to wet strangers however, A Village Affair in Townhill, Dunfermline is worth a visit. Packed with a regularly refreshed selection of secondhand furniture and oddities – we spotted a fine antique

Dunfermline shop nominated for Fashion Award

Maggie’s Farm, a fashion retailer with stores in Dunfermline and Dundee, has been nominated for the Scottish Retailer of the Year as part of the Scottish Fashion Awards. The 2014 event will be hosted in London by Laura Whitmore, Alistair Carmichael, Secretary of State for Scotland and founder Tessa Hartman. Owner Laurissa Drysdale will be in good company;  nominees for some of the other awards include Holly Fulton, Christopher Kane

Free Event in Dunfermline Abbey with Man Booker prize nominee, James Robertson & Jill Calder

On Wednesday 11 June at 6.30pm Man Booker Prize nominee James Robertson and one of Scotland’s best known illustrators Jill Calder will entertain audiences in Dunfermline Abbey with a stunning re-telling of the Robert the Bruce story. James Robertson, who wrote the hugely successful Testament of Gideon Mack and Jill Calder will talk about their book, Robert the Bruce: King of Scots in the historic Abbey, also the site of the King’s

Jill Calder illustrates the story of Robert the Bruce

With the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn being commemorated this year, a stunning new telling of the Robert the Bruce story has been produced by Edinburgh based publishers Birlinn Books. With text by award winning author James Robertson the book has been illustrated by Scotland’s finest Jill Calder. Jill spent a year working on the illustrations for this book, producing over 174 large sheets of ink drawings and lettering