I never go anywhere without my camera, except I did on this occasion and I regretted it extremely. Well my smaller camera had a flat battery, I was only carrying hand luggage and, for heavens sake, who goes to Scotland in March for a varicose veins operation and really believes they are going to take photographs. Then I had never seen Dundee, a city built on hills overlooking the Tay, truly silvery for two whole days of bright spring sunshine. Beyond the water, across the infamous rail bridge,become a joke image thanks to William McGonagall, and its road companion, the further hills of Angus. Whatever the merits of the iphone, and other people's photographs using that medium look quite perfect, I cannot take a decent picture with a telephone and now I am sorry for it.
Dundee is a city full of quiet treasures, whether the steep streets of painted Georgian terraced houses or more expected dark sandstone Victorian public buildings of considerable grandeur to reflect Dundee's wealth. Built on jute, jam and journalism, there was more besides in whaling and ship building which included the construction of RRS Discovery, Robert Falcon Scott's Antartic exploration ship. The renovated ship is now part of the Discovery Centre exhibition, an educational and highly enjoyable experience adjacent to the waterfront building site where a new Victoria & Albert Museum, its design inspired by a ship, is beginning to take shape.
Dundee is doing a grand job of celebrating its past with projects that will enrich its present and future. Jute wealth built the often slightly fantastical, folie de grandeur I suppose, merchants' houses that look out over the Tay, some adapted now as hotels, hospitals or offices. Many of the honest tradesmen as well as the grandees of the City are buried in the Howff cemetery, in use since the 16th century and definitely a place to explore local life and death given a little more time than I had. I do enjoy a good cemetery but I was hurrying on this occasion towards the Verdant Works Jute Museum and a walk instead through the story of Dundee jute.
Restored machinery that is still operational drives the visitor through the processes that enriched the so called Jute Barons, paying for great private mansions, estates and the foundation of that formidable Victorian public architecture that epitomised the wealth of empire. The other side of that coin is well represented in the Jute museum: the urbanisation of poverty as workers poured in from rural areas to live worse on poor city diets and suffer the epidemic diseases of overcrowded humanity in the squalor of areas like Blackness. At the moment the Jute Museum has an additional attraction. The extraordinary Great Tapestry of Scotland is on exhibition in the High Mill, the whole story of Scotland in beautifully worked unique pictures.
The story of Dundee including the vast skeleton of a whale that mistakenly swam into the Firth of Tay in 1883 towards its nemesis in a city of whalers and whale oil is easily read through the displays in the McManus Art Gallery and Museum. This splendid purpose built museum designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott was originally opened as the Albert Institute in 1867. Contemporary and historical exhibitions illustrating the role of Dundee and her sons and daughters at home and abroad are underpinned by wonderful Victorian neo-gothic architectural flourishes. There is an enjoyable a Victorian gallery hung Victorian style floor to ceiling with paintings typical of the period and once owned by the Jute Barons, some rather more desirable than others. The starring role is given to the pre-raphaelite Dante's Dream by Dante Gabriel Rossetti among other works by Millais, Sargent and a raft of less well-known 19th century royal academicians and royal Scottish academicians.
The shop here as at the Jute Museum and the Discovery Centre reflects the jute, jam and journalism theme with some imagination. Rainbow displays of neat jute bags, meet DC Thompson comics with images of their best known characters; Oor Wullie with his spiky hair or, more famous outside Scotland, the Dandy's Desperate Dan, whose 8 foot bronze statue strides proudly through the centre of the city with his dog, Dawg, and fellow Dandy character Minnie the Minx in their wake. Jam means Keiller and the apocryphal invention of marmalade by Janet Keiller - now there are other names, represented in museum and tourist shops beside Scottish tablet and other sweets for which the region is famous. Famous for baking too and there is little doubt that the fruit scones at the Balgove Larder just outside St Andrews are the best to be found as recommended by a notable vascular surgeon. The food at Balgove Larder is all home or locally grown and the farm shop, cafe and steak bar clearly do a roaring trade on the back of excellent produce, desirable location and charming pigs who answer to their names - sad only when one goes missing.
St Andrews, a mere hop skip and jump from Dundee across the Tay is another beautiful city, famous for its golf, ancient university and the glory of the long stretch of beach hard by the golf course where the opening of Chariots of Fire was filmed. These golden sands remain quite remarkably unspoilt although they are to all intents and purposes part of and an amenity to the city.
I stayed at the Invercarse Hotel within five minutes walking distance of the splendid Botanic Garden, nothing like a good tropical house to warm you on a chilly day, and almost directly above delightful Dundee airport where 5 flights a day to London in no way disturb the peace and catching one is no more effort than catching a train. The Invercarse is spotlessly clean, friendly,and has a ballroom which is clearly a centre for festivities from weddings to, while I was there, a 'Maths' Ball and a fundraising golf dinner. The last guests from the latter left, so the hall porter told me, at 5.45 but nothing woke me from my slumbers in an unusually comfortable bed. So sensible too to have the single person rate which is not always available and really does encourage the single person to stay instead of searching the AirBnB site for alternatives.
Beyond the Balgove Larder and the odd cup of coffee in a museum cafe I did not have time to explore Dundee eating further than the marmalade and that fruit scone. That is not entirely true but my son, also with varicose veins, can you believe the bad luck of that inheritance, and I were entertained royally at his house by our surgeon, his GP wife and Ruby their aged jack russell who enjoys going for walks these days in a pram to take the air, With two universities full of hungry students there are plenty of cafes and restaurants including a considerable number of grand looking Indian establishment. One senses in Dundee that there is, beyond the usual high street chains of coffee or clothes shops, a number of independent operations that would be worth exploring on another occasion - sadly my time ran out with a horribly early but efficient flight back to Stansted and the joys of the M25 into London, possibly the only downside to the whole expedition. Dundee is a well-kept secret. Hopefully the new V&A opening in 2018 will put the city, only an hour away from Edinburgh, London too thanks to the airport, and all its attractions seriously on the Scottish tourism map.
