Culross

The walk begins on the Firth of Forth; it was here in the 6th century that St Serf landed with a group of monks to found a religious settlement. Cistercian monks later discovered sea coal and used it to blaze iron pans full of seawater to extract salt.

The first building of note is the Town House (built 1626, clock tower added 1783), where debtors were imprisoned on the vaulted ground floor and witches in the attic. The walk continues on a cobbled causeway whose raised centre was for merchants while miners were confined to the gutters (giving rise to the name Stinking Wynd). White harled houses with pantiled roofs feature turrets, corbels, and crow-step gables showing Dutch influence alongside Scottish defensive architecture.

The Abbey Church contains the tomb of engineer Sir George Bruce, who developed local collieries using horse-turned 'Egyptian Wheels' to dig a seam a mile out to sea. King James VI visited the vaulted ventilation shaft (the Moat) in 1617 and, finding himself surrounded by water, bellowed "Treason!".

A shore diversion leads to the crumbling remains of a 1503 chapel built by Robert Blackadder. The walk concludes at the beautifully restored Culross Palace, built by Sir George Bruce between 1597 and 1611 and now cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.