Fife hotel recommedations
 

Friends, I appreciate the advice I have received on this board before. My cousin and I are going to Scotland in late May for 8 days. We have accomodation for Edinburgh for 2 nights, then going to Pitlochy by car for 3 nights. We have our last night booked near Edinburgh Airport. That leaves 2 nights (May 26 & 27). We would like to go to Fife around St. Andrews somewhere near the sea. We want a hotel, not a small B & B or romantic hideaway. We want 2 rooms. By the way, we are NOT golfers. Looking for suggestions - Sheila and Janis et al, please?
Thanks, Helen

I usually self-cater when in the area and otherwise stay in B&Bs/guest houses, so I don't know that many hotels.

Besides the very expensive Old course Hotel in St Andrews I do know these three.
http://www.rufflets.co.uk/ (Just outside of St Andrews)
http://www.dunnikier-house-hotel.co.uk/ (in Kirkaldy)
http://www.s-h-systems.co.uk/hotels/oldmanor.html (in Lundin Links)

I have stayed at Rufflets but it was more than 20 years ago -- but it was very, VERY nice.

The Scores or the Golf in St Andrews. The Rufflets or the Rusack if you're rich. The Peat Inn if you're mega rich.

The Crow's Nest in Anstruther. The Golf in Elie

Depending on what facilities you want in your hotel, all the suggetons so far are worth following up. The creme de la creme is St Andrews Bay Resort which is apparently wonderful but very, very expensive. I'ts also several miles from anything else.
How near the coast do you need to be? Balirnie House Hotel in Markinch is about 10 miles from the sea and very good, though not cheap. (Markinch was the capital of the Pictish kingdom of Fife which still exists as a regional government authority).

I'm just being cheeky now, but if you go looking for Balirnie on te web, you may find it more easily with the second "b" in. Balbirnie.

Going to bed now,peeps:)

I don't think the St Andrew's Bay is that posh - I believe the Old Course Hotel is much posher. I've stayed at the S.A.B. & while the bedrooms were large and had quite nice views (although not very private if you're on the ground floor & people are playing golf right outside), the public areas are very soulless - more like an airport terminal than a hotel. The pool isn't fantastic & you have to walk through the public areas (bar etc) to get to the spa, so you can't go dowen in your dressing gown. As Craigellachie said it's some distance from a town, but they do have a limited minibus service into St Andrew's.

Sheila: I didn't think the Peat Inn was that expensive (although it's a few years since I went); but it's not really a hotel, is it ? - just 6 suites tacked on to the restaurant (very nice, though).

Friends, thank you for your advice. I had already tried a few of the places you suggested but they were booked or they did not have single rooms. Obviously, we are visiting Scotland at a very busy time for touring. We booked at Crusoe Hotel in Lower Lago - right on the ocean. From there we will tour St. Andrews and surrounds. Looking at this place on the web it sounds cozy. We do not need fancy.
Thank you for your help!

The accommodation seems to be up to £168 per person B&B. Not staggeringly expensive, but also not cheap. But meals, as you will know, are scarily expensive.

But it IS probably the second best restaurant in the country.

I thought I'd posted this a couple of days ago - apologies if it's clogging up some unexplored bit of hyperspace.
Never stayed in the Crusoe Hotel (cos I live so near - are you jealous yet?) but I've had several meals in both the formal restaurant upstairs and the less formal bar meals - both are reasonable and on a good day can be excellent. Walk east along the coast as far as youlike then return by the old railway line; climb Largo Law, not high in world terms but a view to die for on a clear day; some people, myself included, could spend half a day at low tide peering into all the rock pools looking for beasties we can't even name.
Sheila's last posting presumably referred to the Peat Inn, not the Crusoe. I've never been to the Peat Inn but a good friend, who admittedly has a very health appetite, went a few years ago and had to go for fish & chips on the way home! Maybe the fashion for "nouvelle cuisine" has passed and top class restaurants have gone back to giving you a proper meal for your money...

craigiellachie: Maybe your friend was putting you on. I've eaten at the Peat Inn four times in the last 10 years, and each meal was wonderful - VERY satisfying both in quality and quantity.

Janis,
Point taken.
As far as Fife is concerned I'm lucky enough to have a circle of friends who know very quickly where the up and coming places are. I suspect that in most parts of the world there are the Peat Inns, and there are the less well known places which are just as good but much cheaper because they don't have the same mystique. I suppose the whole point of forums (fora?) like this is to tell the world where these places are.

I somewhat agree, Craigellachie (or may I call you Craig?)

But there are places that are there just because they're great. And the Peat Inn is one of them.

If it were me on my own in Fife, I wouldn't eat there; I'd choose the Cellar in St Monan's or the Cellar in Anstruther, or the Ostler's Close in Cupar or I'd try Sangsters in Elie, which is gettinga good name.

But this was about rooms, not food:)

What's with the name, anyway? Are you a Grant? Or a whisky drinker? Or a Speysider?/

Craig, thank you for your suggestions about exploring Lower Largo. Glad that my request occasioned some jocular sparing among you, Sheila, and Janis - Scotland experts all. We look forward to meeting local folk like yourselves. We are Boston Irish who have been to the Old Sod many times but never to Scotland. I really hope that somewhere between our stay in late May in Edinburgh, Pitlochry, and Fife that we have occasion to hear the bagpipes. Love them. They are becoming very popular is the States, especially among police and fire department officers.
Thanks again. Helen

One of the Vale of Atholl pipe band smarches through Pitlochry every, I think, Thursday in the tourist season.

Hope you enjoy them.

Sheila, blimey, I'm sure the Peat Inn rooms were nowhere near that expensive when we went ! I don't think I'd have paid more than £200 for 2, but this was 3/4/5 years ago, in December. Have to say that while we enjoyed our meal, it wasn't one of our best meals ever.

What do you consider to be the best restaurant in the country ? We were at Martin Wishart again for our anniversary on 23/4 (& had to have the tasting menu again) & it's definitely our top one out of those we've tried, by a long way. We haven't been to Andrew Fairlie. We went to Number One at Easter & were underwhelmed, even though we had the tasting menu.

Don't think the Peat Inn is worth the money however I'd rather shell out to stay there than bunk at the Crusoe. Sorry.

Rufflets reminded me of the last days of the British Raj - although it has been many years since I was there.

I guess this is too late for helenbreen (since she's already picked a hotel), but for others who may be interested, wife and I stayed at the St. Andrews Golf Hotel on The Scores. Although the name makes one think that it's a hotel for golfers (and I did play the Old Course), it's extremely well located for the University of St. Andrews, the Castle, and wonderful walks around the town. You can have an ocean view (St. Andrews Bay) for little more than an "interior" view. The cost is not bad at all - don't recall what it was when we were there in 2000, but their web site (http://www.standrews-golf.co.uk/) indicates that it's around 100 pounds per person per night. By the way, even if you're not a golfer, I'd think it might be worth your while to go the the golf museum for a brief visit, and watch the golfers teeing off the first tee and coming in on the 18th green at the Old Course for just a few minutes - it's a classic thing to do.

Have fun, whatever you do. And don't miss all the castles.

Best restaurant in the country? Tough call, since I haven't been to many of them:)

I'd probably have gone for Rogue, till it closed.

Other high points would be The Cellar in Anst'er, the Ostler's Close in Cupar, the Olive Tree in Aberdeen and Let's Eat in Perth.

And I had a very fine meal this evening at the Eating Room in Aberdeen

Places I aspire to eat would include

The Peat Inn; the Three Chimeys on Skye; La Potiniere in Gullane; Rogano in Glasgow.

Places I have eaten which I think horribly over-rated-

Oloroso and the Witchery in Edinburgh

The Farleyer at Aberfeldy under current ownership.

Silver Darlings in Aberdeen

Bearing in mind that I don't eat meat or fish and I'm bad at pretension.

Helen, sorry to hijack your thread, but hopefully you will find this info of interest too !

Sheila, I do agree about Oloroso and the Witchery being vastly overrated. I thought the food at the Witchery was alright but not worth the money. On my one and only visit to Oloroso, a few weeks after it opened, it was the only time in my life I've ever been presented with a menu containing nothing I fancied !! I ordered thinking it must be more interesting than it sounded, but it wasn't. However, one evening I sat for an hour opposite the concierges' desk at the Balmoral (I'd got the time I was meeting people wrong) & they were sending *everyone* there - some sort of kickback going on there, I think.

I also thought the food at the Peat Inn was overrated - quite nice but nothing special. I thought maybe it was better years ago, but judging by Janis's comments maybe we just went on an off night ?

I ate at Rogano once & I think it was quite nice but nothing special - worth it once for the decor, though !

I went to La Potiniere under its original ownership and it was superb, but haven't been under the current regime. I forget the name of the original owners, but did you know she became a vegetarian ?

I did like the Silver Darlings but the point of it is to eat fish, no ? Having said that, it wasn't one of the most memorable seafood meals I've ever had.

I too would love to go to the Three Chimneys. We did get a booking once but then couldn't make it - maybe one day.

Caroline, no problem. Happy to see that my query has evoked discussion about preferred restaurants in the area.

Knoxvillecouple, thank you for your suggestion. I looked up that hotel in St.Andrews - it looks lovely. But the tariff for single rooms was 125 pounds whereas the Crusoe was 70. Pity us poor Yanks - our dollar is so weak against your currency. When I was last in New York I noticed tons of Brits enjoying the favorable exchange rate. They are also all over my city, Boston. Good to see them. We were really hurting for visitors after 911.

Last year my cousin and I went to Tuscany and had great single rooms for 4 nites in Siena (Ravizza) and 3 nites in Florence (Bruneschelli in the shadow of the Duomo.) Tariff for each was about $100 per nite in our money.

Many of our friends would not go to Britain now because of our declining dollar but we really want to experience Scotland.