Although the weather is nowhere near as good, the East Neuk of Fife is far easier and a lot cheaper to get to than Chile.
On the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, there is also less threat of troubling the Volcanic Explosivity Index and less chance of getting caught up in a tsunami.
Compared to the offshore islands of the Vapareiro region of the South Pacific, around Lower Largo you don’t have to source your own seafood and live on spiny lobster either. Or source, chase , gut and clean your fowl. There is the “Chips Ahoy!” fish and chip shop ad pub in Pittenweem (it also serves haggis suppers, red pudding suppers and steak pie suppers. There are also excellent local butchers, such as Campbell’s Prime Meat of Linlithgow and John Hendersons’s Glenrothes.
Nor do you need to worry about new ways of cooking feral goat and sausage tree leaves as the menu at The Crusoe Hotel boasts pie of the day, venison haunch steaks and a full Scottish breakfast.
There you sleep under Egyptian sheets rather than goat skins. And won’t be disturbed by raucously randy sea lions gathering for mating. Every bedroom has a seaview. And you are “the monarch of all you survey.”
You don’t have to worry about hiding from Spanish sailors either. There is plenty to do to stave off boredom and loneliness. The Fife fishing village of Crail is nearby as are many golf courses. From Lundin Links, Elie, Kingsbarns. The Old Course and the other courses around St Andrews.
To pass the time, you don’t have to sing psalms to yourself or build beacons to attract passing ships.
2026 is the 350th anniversary of the birth of the world’s most famous “maroonee” and castaway.
The son of a tanner and cobbler, Alexander Selkirk was born in Lower Largo, Fife, a half an hour north-east of Edinburgh and a half an hour from St Andrews and “The Home of Golf”.
The fishing village must be the only place in the world which has a statue dedicated to a buccaneer and privateeer who lived a “wicked, cursed and abominable life”, was charged with “indecent conduct in church” and assaulting a shipwright and spent most of his working life at sea raiding Panamanian golf mining times and boarding Spanish treasure galleons to steal the jewellery hidden under the frocks and bloomers of Spanish ladies.
Alexander Selkirk asked to be marooned. It was his choice. He was not shipwrecked. Doubting the seaworthiness and not trusting the “worm-eaten” leakiness of his ship, the 16-gun, 52m long, “Cinque Ports” which had set sail from Kinsale in Ireland with the “George”, at his request he was left behind on Mas Teira island in the Santa Fernandez archipelago, off the west coast of Chile.
The Cinque Ports foundered off Colombia and its captain and crew imprisoned for four years in Lima.
After his rescue by the “Duke”, Selkirk rejoined the navy, dying of yellow fever in Ghana where he was buried at sea.
Selkirk inspired Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, The Life And Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe which is set in the Caribbean rather than South America and “Robinson Crusoe of York”, nee Robinson Kreutznaer was German rather than Scottish. His father was from Bremen.
Poet William Cowper’s poem, “The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk” popularized “the monarch of all I survey”.
The Robinson Crusoe statue on Main Street, Lower Largo, near Leven reads : “In memory .Alexander Selkirk, mariner, the original of Robinson Crusoe who lived on the island of Juan Fernández in complete solitude for four years and four months. He died 1723, lieutenant of HMS Weymouth, aged 47 years. This statue is erected by David Gillies, net manufacturer, on the site of the cottage in which Selkirk was born.”
Crusoe is in his trademark goat skins.
The state was unveiled in 1885 at the site of his birthplace home. David Gillies of Cardy House, Lower Largo, a descendant of the Selkirks, donated the statue created by Thomas Stuart Burnett.
In 1869, the crew of HMS Topaz placed a bronze tablet at Selkirk’s Lookout on Más a Tierra. On 1 January 1966, it was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island. The largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, Mas Afuera, became Alejandro Selkirk island.
Lower Largo’s seven-room 1924 Crusoe Hotel, a former granary and tea room, is owned by Rachel and Graham Bucknell who also own the 4-room Bridge Inn, on the Union Canal at Ratho, Edinburgh and the six-room, seafront eighteenth century Ship Inn down the coastal road at Elie. It is the home of the only beach cricket club in the world. It has a full fixture list during the summer. Including one against the M.C.C.
A signpost on the harbour of Lower Largo points to the Juan Fernandez islands, 7500 miles away.
The message of Robinson Crusoe book is coming to a true sense of things. To realize that there is always something to be grateful for. We lack nothing but what we have already. It is never too late to be wise.
In Defoe’s words : “ “The discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”
With its Laura Thomas bathroom toiletries, homemade granola, Crusoe burgers, chunky chips, pan-fried cod, tender stem broccoli and celeriac mash sides and a breakfast (sausage, bacon, haggis, black pudding, tattie scone, mushroom, tomato, beans, and eggs -chicken, not turtle) anyyne would be cast away there.
Rather than on a remote south American archipelago with no airport.
As well as a well-stocked bar. The Crusoe has a fireplace so you don’t have to cut down any pimento trees to keep warm and predators at bay. It also provides cutlery so you don’t have to go beachcombing to make your own. It even has a well-appointed Robinson Crusoe private dining and function room. “Well-appointed” meaning that it isn’t a tatty shack.
The East Neuk of Fife is a wonderful to place to be marooned. Because you don’t have to subsist on wild turnips or tame wild cats for company.
Close by, in Kirkcaldy, Raith Rovers also play at home every fortnight.
Tel. 01333 406775