The Causey
Published by Shorts Magazine: https://madmagz.com/magazine/1913445#/page/67
Cover image by John Park: https://postercreative.co.uk
The Causeways are protected. Have been since ’73. Blue whin, grey, red irregular setts - ovals, spheres, lumps and slabs. The ones in the middle are laid and regular, the rest camber down to guttering shoots at the side, which glisten with the rain. Those curved and crooked streets - The Cross, The Back Lane, Hagg’s Wynd. Of special architectural and historic interest - according to Historic Environment Scotland. According to me too, and all who have raced here.
Careful though - turn your ankle now, your Causey’s done.
I came from Edinburgh after work, returning to the place I’m from, the place William Cobbet saw in 1832 “rising up and bending round by the side of the water - as beautiful a place as any to be found…” Culross.
The village is laid upon a hill. It runs down from the Abbey in a steep line to the Townhouse at the Green. The municipal authorities of the burgh “statut and ordaint” in 1660 that “all suche persons that use horses thereintill, yock the samye to work for leading of stones to the said work.” All were required to do their part in the laying of the Causeways.
From here you can go all the way to St Andrews along the Fife Pilgrim Way. But come Gala Week, in late summer, there is only one route for a Culross Pilgrim.
An 1800m footrace, with 60m elevation. The Causey.
Culross Primary School had eighty pupils when I was ten. We were raised with competitive edges. The Causey was to us the Crucible, the F.A. Cup Final, Silverstone, and the World Championship of Darts. Every metre of the course has been contested fiercely for generations and in my own lifetime the race has generated folklore. Like the year a certain someone, more often seen toting a cigarette butt than a relay baton, stormed down Tanhouse Brae to win the girls race ahead of Lucy Crookston, the favourite, who went on to race triathlon for Great Britain. The stewards’ enquiry learned that after sprinting out of sight at the beginning of the race she had hidden in a bin until she could hear her rivals echoing footsteps high on the road above. Emerging from her hiding place still comfortably ahead of the other girls she gambolled home to victory. Her name lives in infamy.
Traditionally the Causey was open only to children to the age of sixteen. Beyond this it was assumed that the youth of the village would lose interest or have moved on to better things.
These assumptions have for many years been mistaken. The standard of racing was high. I played youth professional football growing up and medalled twice at the Scottish Universities Track & Field Championships, but I’d never won the Causey.
So you can imagine the interest with which I received this message from my mum.
“Gala Week and there is to be an Adult Causey race this evening. In case you want to bring your running shoes?”
So it was that a little after 7pm one evening in late summer I found myself changing quickly out of hospital clothes into shorts behind the pottery shop I worked in as a boy and joined the starting line in front of the Tron. Nostalgia came in waves.
The race was called and we got moving. There were nine or ten in the field, men and women. We flashed past harled and painted houses - white, pink, burnt yellow, blue. They clamber erratically up the side of the steep hill from the Palace by the Forth to the Abbey at the top. The course is a P-shape from Sandhaven over the cobbles to a paved loop round Erskine Brae before the harum-scarum descent of Tanhouse Brae to the finish.
As the course began to wind higher I pressed forward with small quick steps and let some of the runners fall away. Three survived the first acceleration, including a seventeen year-old from Low Valleyfield who looked the most likely contender. As the way looped out between fields beyond the last houses I kicked again. I could hear his breath grow fast to ragged gasps and drop away.
The sun was halfway up the sky as I reached the top of the course. I passed the police car which had closed the descending portion of the road and set off downhill. Past the Norman tower of the Abbey, I let my limbs go loose - the high walls of Tanhouse Brae clapped and reverberated my clattering feet on the road. I turned my head back - nothing.
The momentum and the gradient carried me down to the cobbled section again. I kept to the flatter stones in the centre, ‘The Croun o’ the Causey'. Once only persons of note were permitted to walk here. Now they carried me round the last corner and I sprinted through the line. Six minutes forty six seconds - the fastest know time.
It is said Agricola crossed the Forth and landed Roman troops in galleys at Culross on his way to Perth. Alas, there is no evidence to support this claim beyond the speculation of a Mr David Beveridge, writing with the aid of his imagination in 1885.
We have only that which is set down. I climbed the Townhouse steps to collect my medal and a £10 prize. One side read ‘Culross Children’s Gala’. I was reminded that the previous record, 7:13, had been set by a fifteen year-old. Was I supposed to be bothered about that?
That night I sent a message to my three brothers, Daniel, Cameron, Alexander, and to Peter Munnoch, Andrew Brown, and Lewis Wotherspoon - who had contended for the race when we were boys.
"So this is a thing now.
6:46 is the time to shoot at.
Any takers?”
That was August 26, 2016. The time still stands.
Beveridge, D. (1885) Culross and Tulliallan: Or, Perthshire on Forth, Volume 1. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. Pp V-40.
Cunningham, A.S. (1902). Romantic Culross, Torryburn, Carnock, Cairneyhill, Saline and Pitfirrane. W. Clerk & Son, Dunfermline. Pp 10-44.
Culross Development Trust are raising funds to renovate The Stables, a community centre: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-stables-hub-culross