Homecoming: exploring Fife’s tidal pools
I left home in Fife at 17, before I was a Proper Swimmer, who craved swimming adventure.
My youth was, rather, spent swimming in the local high-ceilinged, fun-filled, echoing municipal pool with its glass walls, its diving boards and fantastic spring board and deep, deep end. My big sister and I did our best to be Sirens to the local boys rather than passing sailors: sitting on the edge of the pool and giggling coyly into the clammy air, dangling toes into the water, pretending to be holidaying French girls.
And although my University years were spent around the sweeping beaches of St Andrews, even then I didn’t spend much time in the sea except to rush knee deep into the water to rescue errant frisbees. I left Fife for good, aged 21, with barely a backward glance. Visits home mainly happened in Winter meaning that I rarely explored the coast of the East Neuk – its fishing villages and picturesque harbours – and even less so from the water of the grey twinkling North Sea beyond the shoreline.
And despite becoming a habitual swimmer – who will not go more than a few days without getting wet and will seek out new places to swim at the drop of a hat – somehow I have missed what has been in my own family’s backyard — Fife’s tidal pools (for apparently there are many of them!)
But this year, unusually, a visit home coincided with summer: I planned a trip home for my big sis’s birthday in August. As I was planning my trip, the possibility of a detour for a swim in Pittenweem’s newly refurbished tidal pool didn’t seem an entirely unreasonable proposition.
We spent the morning at the beach in St Andrews, lolling on the East Sands. Sitting on a low wall on the slipway to the beach, eating toasties and Mr Whippy ice cream cones, feet buried in the golden sand, watching dog walkers and daytrippers with wailing babies. A small girl lay face down – fully clothed – in the sand. The sun came out and we soaked it in greedily, trousers rolled up, the wind whipping our hair.
Can we go to the tidal pool? Please can we? I’ve bought my swimming things… it’s been refurbished… there is crazy golf, I’ve heard…
Sat nav guiding us, we drove the dozen miles through the countryside to Pittenweem and found ourselves in a jam-packed car park on top of a cliff. A stiff wind blew, and what had been delightful blue skied sunbathing morning, turned into a blowing-a-hoolie-silver-grey-skied-grey-sea afternoon. As my family staggered out of the car into the stiff wind, pulling on jumpers, I rushed to the cliff’s edge, and peered excitedly down to the scene below. Nestling at the bottom of the cliff, jammed in between the rock formations that run perpendicular to the shoreline, was the Pittenweem seawater swimming pool in all its glory.
From up on the cliff, the scene looked unsettling. The pool somehow gave the impression that the seawater within its walls had been trapped against its will, held back from its rightful place, marooned on the surrounding rocks like a shipwreck. I shivered with excitement. The people below looked small and the pool looked enticingly big.
Quickly depositing my mom and sister on a blustery bench at the top of the cliff, I scurried to find the path down to the pool, clutching my swim bag to my chest. A set of stairs and a newly made path wound down to the beach below. What seemed somewhat hostile and lonely from above was completely different at the foot of the cliff. A small sandy beach bustled, full of people. The cliff sheltered the beach from the worst of the wind: all was calm down here. Families had set up camps with picnics; kids scampered on the rocks; swimmers of all ages and abilities were dressing or undressing and wading into the water happily chatting and playing.
Undressing quickly, I abandoned my clothes on a rocky ledge, weighing my dry things down with my shoes so that it wouldn’t blow away. I edged gingerly over some boulders to the beach. Too late I remembered the advice that entry to the water was stony and one should bring shoes. I winced slowly and painfully in to the water, not wanting to stumble and fall. Sharp slippery stones and cold tender feet are rarely a fun combination. Soon enough the water was deep enough to slip forward into the embrace of the cool sea.
Oh gosh I’d forgotten how beautifully cathartic it is to swim in the sea. The gentle motion of the swell; the surprising joy of the extra buoyancy; the thrilling anxiety of the prospect of what lies beneath; the sting of salt water in your mouth. But here as well – the steely grey and silver of the sky and its bigness; the rocks surrounding; and the journey to the end of the pool where the water stops abruptly and a peek over the green slippery wall reveals, at low tide, the mystery of the seabed and the jagged black rocks that surround the safety of the pool.
And but oh! The sea! The sea! Captured wickedly and trapped within this rough rectangular box for all of my swimming desires.
I swam up and down for a few delicious minutes, anxious not to keep my family too long; enjoying the experience and the tingling cold water on my skin. This place is a strange contradiction: hostile but friendly, rugged but tamed, hidden but thriving, cold but warmed by the wonderful feeling of community. Those using the pool were a brilliantly varied bunch: a group of older women smiling and swimming together (are these the menopausal mermaids I wonder?); a father in trunks playing with a little girl in a wetsuit; families; groups of kids jumping in and out of the water from the concrete walls, and a lone tourist visitor with a pink cap, grinning to herself. How can I possibly have never been here?!
As I finished I looked up to the cliffs. My sister, high above, was looking down and waving back at me. I wondered if, from up there, that she could see the beaming smile on my face. I bet she could.
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The renovation of this tidal pool has been a long term project of The West Braes Project, a regeneration project in Pittenweem that has worked tirelessly to improve facilities for locals – including a crazy golf course, renovation of the tidal pool and access to it. Massive thanks to them!!!
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