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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Travel
Rachel Dixon

Boat trips, swimming and seafood: 10 of the UK’s best harbour towns and villages

Colourful fishing boats moored in Pittenweem harbour, lined with white-painted stone buildings
The historic Pittenweem harbour in East Neuk, Fife, where fish is sold on the quay. Photograph: Angus McComiskey/Alamy

Pittenweem, Fife

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

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