A very good friend of mine, Alan Dawson, is some what of an art buff. In my humble opinion he has terrific taste and an eye for the artistic merits of all that is, well, art. Which is probably why he owns and runs an art gallery.
I took advantage of the recent fabulous sunny weather to visit Alan, on the opposite side of the Forth from my house, in a little Fife coastal village called Aberdour, where he lives and his art gallery also calls home. From the beach I could look across on the clear day to the impressive skyline of Edinburgh.
Aberdour started life as a harbour, a mini port, which is situated at the point where the River Dour enters the Forth. Aber is a Pictish word meaning confluence, and so evolved the name Aberdour.
The village also boats its own castle, now mostly a ruin and in the hands of Historic Scotland, but it is one of the earliest surviving castles on mainland Scotland, dating from around the 13th century.
Aberdour was beginning to feel like a medieval hot spot, as what felt like quite literally a stones throw from the beach, is the island of Inchcolm. In the centre of island is an Abbey, founded by the Bishop of Dunkeld in the 12th century, and at one time linked to St Columba.
Alan likes a project, and a couple of years ago he bought over the old butchers shop, with it's curved facade taking up a prominent corner site. It was just begging to be an art gallery in my opinion. Such is his eye for detail, he made sure that the renovation kept a hold of a lot of the original features of the old butchers shop. Don't worry, I'm not talking about pigs hanging from hooks, but certainly the hooks themselves are still there, now with pictures hanging from them.
But none of pigs sadly.



That changed in the late 19th century, when the railway reached
the villages, with the building east of the line from the newly opened
Forth Rail Bridge, and the ferry service to the harbour came to an end.
It was now far quicker and safer to take the train across the Forth.
The
ticket inspectors aboard the train crossing the bridge were known to
sing, "half an hour, half an hour, half an hour to Aberdour, tickets
please".
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