Scottish Fisheries Museum

📌 Anstruther, Fife
★★★★

With thousands of miles of coastline, the sea has inevitably played a big part in shaping Scotland and its economy. It’s fitting that the country’s main museum telling the story of the fishing industry can be found on the harbourside at Anstruther, one of the most attractive of Fife’s East Neuk fishing settlements. The museum’s scale isn’t apparent from the outside, so don’t baulk at the admission fee; after paying, you soon find that the museum stretches across several different buildings with about a dozen different rooms. Exhibits are sensibly displayed in chronological order, starting with “primitive” early vessels, moving through sailmaking and the herring era, towards steam and finally modern fishing. There’s a general focus on Scotland’s east coast, but occasionally the net is cast wider to include the rest of the British Isles and other North Sea countries. The highlight is the cavernous Zulu Gallery, housing the deckless hull of the Research LK62, a large Zulu fishing boat finally preserved here after an eventful life. Some of the info is quite complicated (tie yourself in knots trying to make a fishing net!) but the text is accompanied by hundreds of boats and other items, so all ages can have a whale of a time.