Tour Scotland 4K travel video of a fishing boat sailing past the Isle Of May, located 5 miles off the East Neuk of Fife coast on ancestry, genealogy, family history visit to the outer Firth of Forth, Britain, United Kingdom. The Isle of May is the largest of the islands of the Firth of Forth. It is noted amongst naturalists for its colonies of seabirds, its migrant birds and its colony of grey seals. Designated a national nature reserve in 1956, it is now recognised as an important seabird research centre. The island is accessed during the spring and summer when a regular boat service operates from Anstruther and Crail to the landing at Kirkhaven. Weekly stays are possible in the Bird Observatory by prior arrangement. Close to the Kirkhaven landing stand the ruins of the Chapel of St Aidan which are all that remain of a priory built in the 12th century and dedicated to the Christian missionary who was killed on the island by marauding Danes in AD 875. The Isle of May was an important religious centre until its monks moved to Pittenweem in the 16th century, but the island remained inhabited until the early 18th century. In 1636 Alexander Cunningham built a lighthouse beacon, the first permanently-manned lighthouse in Scotland and in 1844 a subsidiary 'Low Light' was built on the east side of the island. During both World Wars the island was under military occupation and in 1989 the Main Lighthouse became fully automated prior to the ownership of the island passing from the Northern Lighthouse Board to the Nature Conservancy Council, now Scottish Natural Heritage. The May Isle has long been a focal point of the nearby fishing communities. Annually, the wives and children of the small village of Cellardyke were taken to the May Isle for a picnic by the fishermen. On 1 July 1837 one such trip turned to tragedy when one of the small row boats used to transport them to Kirkhaven harbour overturned leading to the loss of 13 lives. A proper lighthouse was built on the island in 1816 by Robert Stevenson. During the height of the breeding season, over 200,000 seabirds nest on the island, including puffins, black-legged kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots, shags, fulmars, oystercatchers, eider ducks, and various species of tern and gull. The Firth of Forth, Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe, is the estuary, firth in Scots, of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Fife on the north coast and Lothian on the south. Firth is a cognate of fjord, a Norse word meaning a narrow inlet. It was known as Bodotria in Roman times. In the Norse sagas it was known as the Myrkvifiörd. An early Welsh name is Merin Iodeo, or the " Sea of Iudeu. " The drainage basin for the Firth of Forth covers a wide geographic area including places as far from the shore as Ben Lomond, Cumbernauld, Harthill, Penicuik and the edges of Gleneagles Golf Course. Many towns line the shores, as well as the petrochemical complexes at Grangemouth, commercial docks at Leith, former oil rig construction yards at Methil, the ship-breaking facility at Inverkeithing and the naval dockyard at Rosyth, along with numerous other industrial areas, including the Forth Bridgehead area, encompassing Rosyth, Inverkeithing and the southern edge of Dunfermline, Burntisland, Kirkcaldy, Bo'ness and Leven. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day. Find things to see and do in Scotland where you are always welcome
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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