Traditions and History

I awoke slightly disoriented about where I was- I had dreamt I was in my bed at home. I got dressed and went downstairs to get breakfast. There was not too much variety in the food. I had some corn flakes and an apple and sat at a table with some other girls from my building.

View from dorm room window

After breakfast, I walked to meet my dad at the apartment. We went to the student union to join a walking tour of the campus. The guide, unfortunately was not very informative, partially because the group was too large, and partially because she was carrying on an independent conversation with one of the group members and not addressing the whole group. The only pieces of new information I learned were that the library is slowly sinking, as the architects did not account for the weight of the books, and that there is a mysterious face in stone (see here) which is supposed to be Patrick Hamilton on the building above where the PH is on the sidewalk near St. Salvadors. For those of you who do not know, which I am guessing is most of you, Patrick Hamilton was a student at St. Andrews during the Reformation and was burned at the stake for his Protestant beliefs. There is now cobblestones forming the letters "PH" where this happened, and if students step on them they will not graduate (unless they do the May Dip into the North Sea or run around St. Salvador's Quad naked three times backwards during the change of a class).

We decided to break off from the group after a while, and visited a nice seaside garden. Then we got a ticket to see the castle and explored the ruins for a while. They have a really weird prison at the castle called the bottle dungeon. Basically it is a bottle shaped hole in the ground carved out of rock. To lock people in, all they had to do was lower them down the neck of the bottle and into the window-less and door-less chamber below. There was no way to escape unless you had a ladder or rope. The castle had very pretty views of the ocean, especially from some of the towers.

Seaside garden

Next we headed down to join up with the Pier Walk in the harbor. The Pier Walk is another St. Andrews tradition, although nobody knows quite how it started. Some believe it is too commemorate a student named John Honey who rescued five men from a sinking ship in the 19th century by swimming them each in turn to the pier. Students normally wear their gowns (more about them on next post), but none of the freshers had them yet, so walked in street clothes. If you are brave, you can return on the high part of the pier, which is a narrow (about 2 ft across) path about 20 ft over the water and rocks with no handrails.

The Pier Walk (unfortunately without gowns)

Me on the pier

After the Pier Walk, we visited the cathedral and were very impressed about the sheer scale of it. It must have been astoundingly impressive when it was still standing. We could see why St. Andrews became the capital of religion in Scotland when the church was first built in 1158. Especially amazing were St. Rules tower and the double towers with "windows" (which served as an inspiration for my blog banner).

St. Rules Tower

Towers with "windows"

We had a quiet evening. My dad went to the parent's reception and I spent some time reading and relaxing. Then we walked down by the golf course (one of the oldest courses in the world) and around a grassy area by the aquarium and a sea-food restaurant. After that, we settled in the apartment and dorm for the night.

Famous Swilken Bridge at the golf course

My dad at the top of some steps near the aquarium

dorm exploring freshers week history traditions walking