Take a couple of former hippies, a slice of fine Fife woodland and an old Rolling Stones number and what do you get? Probably all sorts of things, but Gimme Shelter is one of the less obvious outcomes to spring to mind.
Chris and Yvonne Barley have been here since the early seventies, having relocated from Yorkshire to this rustic bolthole near Dunfermline to start afresh. Over the years they’ve managed to extend the property to include a couple of cottages and, ultimately, the hilly woodland that forms the campsite. It’s all surprisingly quiet and secluded given its position in prime commuting territory for Edinburgh. Admittedly you can just hear the M90 from some of the pitches, but elsewhere it’s the Pinkerton Burn tumbling through the site that makes the most noise.
There’s an old story in these parts that, such was the slaughter, the Pinkerton Burn ran red for several days. Nice. But then, as aficionados of the Rolling Stones should know, ‘Gimme Shelter’ was a track on the album ‘Let It Bleed’.
The only battle raging here now, though, is that old sixties chestnut: the Beatles versus the Stones. Take your pick, because the camping pitches dotted around the wood are all named after songs – ‘Strawberry Fields’, ‘Rising Sun’ and so on – so you’ll have to come down on one side or the other.
In the site’s upper pitches, out in the open and exposed to the blistering Fife sun, there’s drinking water available in containers. Then in the lower pitches, which tend to be secluded arbours within the shade of all the trees, there’s cold-running mains water.
Each of the pitches has its own wooden furniture (all hand-made by Chris) as well as a fire pit, the wherewithal for which is on sale at reception to get you going (kindling, paper, lighters and a bag of a logs), though you’re free to add any burnable bits and bobs you can find lying around.
And it’s such a mazy wood, with some of the pitches accessible only through narrow grassy strips fringed with encroaching woodland, that there’s a real feeling of safety and seclusion, making it great for kids. Unless they’re planning to machete their way through the woodland, the only way out is past their parents’ tent.
When it’s time to go exploring away from the site, Inverkeithing is less than a half-hour train ride from Edinburgh across the famous Forth Rail Bridge. Or if you fancy something a little less busy, take a trip up the Fife Coastal Road. And if you want to go the whole hog, you can swing back through Dunfermline, another of Scotland’s former capitals and proud birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, once the world’s wealthiest man, and indeed, Gordon Brown.
Back at the Rolling Stones campsite, in exile from main street, you can shake your hips and tumble dice, shine a light and let it loose and you’ll soon start to question whether you can’t always get what you want.
