Scotland's newest city is the perfect Edinburgh alternative, it stole my heart

A collage of a maze, statues and a tall clock tower building in Dunfermline, Scotland.
It gets just 0.04% of the tourists Edinburgh does (Picture: Metro/Getty Images)

Welcome to B-List Britain, a new and exclusive Metro Travel series with Ben Aitken, the author of the book Shitty Breaks. Ben argues it’s time to ditch the UK’s hotspots and explore unsung cities instead. This week, he’s in Scotland’s ‘newest city’…

The first thing that struck me upon arriving in the newly minted city of Dunfermline was the number of buildings named after someone called Andrew Carnegie.

There is a Carnegie Hall, a Carnegie Library, a Carnegie Leisure Centre, and even a Carnegie Pole Dancing Society.

It was to the latter institution that I presently set off.

When I arrived at the address and came to understand that the woman who’d told me about the Pole Dancing Soc had clearly been winding me up, I consoled myself with a spell in Bryan Beveridge’s butcher shop, recently named the best in Scotland.

Bryan’s shop proved difficult to exit, so engaging were the items on display.

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You could dam the Ganges with a length of Lorne Sausage Block, while the Dunfy Pie – which is filled with layers of haggis, black pudding and square sausage rondels – wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Grand Designs.

I enjoyed my Dunfy Pie while exploring The Carnegie Birthplace Museum, which tells the story of how Dunfermline’s most famous son went from being skint and Scottish to unthinkably rich and a tiny bit American.

For me, the most fascinating element of Andrew Carnegie’s story was his philanthropy.

Believing that a man who dies rich dies disgraced, Carnegie spent his final few decades trying to give away every penny he had – a course of behaviour that still gives his descendants nightmares.

Between 1093 and 1420, eighteen royals were laid to rest at Dunfermline’s majestic abbey.

Historic graveyard in Dunfermline, Scotland, on a bright, cloudy day
Royal real estate (Picture: Ben Aitken)

Evidently, this was the place to be seen dead. One of the big shots buried here was Robert the Bruce. When Bob became King of Scotland in 1306, the job description was essentially to get England to sod off and leave Scotland alone.

This Robert did, though not before several dispiriting setbacks – recall that incident in a cave or a barn when Robert is said to have watched a spider struggling to spin a web and instead of helping the spider got up and went home with renewed determination to win Scotland’s freedom, the selfish git.

Pittencrieff Park was voted the best in Scotland and not without reason.

The park’s umpteen acres of undulating loveliness were gifted to the local people by that man Carnegie.

One of the best things about the park is the peacocks. I found the aviary where the peacocks are based, and there watched Louis unfurl his seductive display feathers, turning himself into one part peacock, four parts chat-up line.

As gestures go, it’s right up there. I’d take the bait.

More on this later (Picture: Ben Aitken)

Because a city break isn’t complete until you’ve done something weird, I walked out to Craigluscar Farm, where I was met by John and Graham, who have been up here working this land since auld lang syne.

Only now they also run hover-crafting sessions. If you’ve not seen one before, an F2 hovercraft has the look of a bathtub that’s merged with a hairdryer.

John revved one up and then gave me a demo, zigzagging up and down a well-groomed field as if it were as easy as buttering toast.

Whereas John made it look simple, I made it look practically impossible. The six-lap record for the circuit John has laid out is two minutes and ten seconds. It took me a quarter of an hour. (£45 for a session.)

Next up, Jack ‘O’ Bryan’s, whose titular Jack is one of the top 30 chefs under 30.

It’s a novel eatery, with one leg in Scotland and the other in South America, which is no mean feat. All the food was good, but the four homemade chocolates that I had for pudding were sublime.

A wooden box of artisan chocolates
Next level cocoa (Picture: Ben Aitken)

The best of them was the apple pie choccy, whose filling was a small bomb of sweet and salty apple. I tried to keep it in my mouth as long as possible, which drew some looks.

Dunfermline’s old fire station is now an arts hub. On top of its gallery and café, Fire Station Creative offers a regular calendar of gigs and talks and shindigs, and so on.

After spending a happy hour considering the current exhibition while nursing a Tennent’s, I moved on to a pub called The Monarch, where I caught the set of a self-styled post-punk two-piece called Model Worker.

Dunfy satisfies and surprises (Picture: Ben Aitken)

The lead singer put in one hell of a shift. Shirt off, up on the tables – it was an egalitarian display, giving us all a turn in the front row.

After a decent night’s kip at Garvock House, a first-rate indie with a gorgeous garden (B&B doubles from £135), I headed to the library on Abbot Street, which was the first of the 3000 that Andrew Carnegie would ultimately bankroll.

In the library’s gallery space, I was delighted to find a painting by L.S. Lowry, one of only two or three in Scottish hands. The painting was called An Old Street, and was a fine example of the artist looking for beauty and value in unlikely places – and finding it.

Dunfermline gets just 0.04% of the tourists that Edinburgh does, and in my view, that is a miscarriage of justice up there with Ant and Dec winning best presenters ten years on the trot.

See what everyone’s missing out on (Picture: Ben Aitken)