Post-lockdown picks: Six of the most memorable places in Scotland to take advantage of our newfound freedoms.

THERE aren’t a lot of reasons to visit Burntisland. It isn’t the most scenic spot, a bit of a plook on the sonsie face of Fife, and in fact there may be just one. The lost treasure of King Charles 1.

It’s pretty unlikely you’re going to come back with gold doubloons and a tiara or two but it’s the place where, on the stormy night of July 10, 1633, the Blessing of Burntisland went down to the depths of the Forth with Charles watching in anguish from the deck of the battleship Dreadnought as his plunder went with it.

Charles had been on a tour of Scotland after his coronation here and was travelling the country picking up tributes from earls and dukes, and no doubt the serfs who funded them.

The ferry, the Blessing of Burntisland, which plied between the town and Leith on the other side, was apparently loaded down with 20 carts of jewels, plates and textiles, including a 280-piece silver dinner service commissioned by Henry V111.

The treasure is beyond value, certainly worth more than £500 million which was the guesstimate put on it in the 1990s, but its historical importance is monumental.

There’s no doubt the boat went down with 33 of its 35 passengers and crew – there are historic records and bodies buried in graveyards – but the booty has never been recovered, which may not be too surprising as there are more than 500 wrecks in the Firth of Forth.

Charles blamed witches for the sudden storm, targeting a coven in Lancashire (no, I don’t know why, perhaps they were the nearest?) and they were duly hanged.

All of this remained almost unknown until a local historian came up with it and the search began in 1991, fruitlessly so far. A bunch of US treasure-hunters came, led by Barry Clifford who had found the wreck of the Whydah, “Black Sam” Bellamy’s pirate ship off the coast of Cape Cod. And went.

Then the Royal Navy was called in to use all sorts of fancy undersea technology to locate the wooden barque. Prince Andrew, before he hooked up with Jeffrey Epstein, was involved.

Spookily, it was on just the spot that a Wigan dowser called Jim Longton had, with his divining rods, predicted some years before.

Since then, drivers, led by the Burntisland Heritage Trust, have been trying to explore the wreck which is about 120 feet down and covered in silt, if it is the right one, but the conditions are so difficult, currents and visibility almost nil, that they haven’t recovered even a single gold coin. But the hunt goes on.

If you haven’t brought your wet suit you could take a break in The Roasting Project coffee house. For all I know they may welcome folks in rubber.

Something to Brae about

FOR a cheap day out, the Electric Brae on the A719 south of Dunure is the place. It’s a gravity hill and a freewheeling vehicle is magically drawn uphill, where the road seems to be going down, and before we knew better it was believed that electric or magnetic attraction was responsible. In fact it’s all an optical illusion due to the configuration of the land on either side.

It’s not unique – there are hundreds of these hills throughout the world where gravity apparently works in reverse. But it did impress Allied commander Dwight D Eisenhower who had an apartment in nearby Culzean Castle where he plotted the Dunkirk invasion in the war.

He often took visitors to see the phenomenon on the quarter-mile site and other US airforce personnel continued the tradition.

Let’s face it there wasn’t much else to do. There used to be a road sign marking the Electric Brae but it got stolen so often that the council replaced it with a massive, carved stone which has so far proved souvenir-proof.

Cross to the other side

IF you believe in ghosts then Overtoun Bridge in Dumbarton is the place for you.

Just don’t take your pet spaniel because it could well take a header off it and come to a sticky end below. Locals call it the “dog suicide bridge”.

No-one knows for sure how many dogs have taken the final leap (cats, apparently are immune) but one estimate is more than 350.

One explanation is that dogs catch the scent of wildlife in the wooded areas below but that seems an unproven assumption. Some of them might be vegans.

The better one is that they are spooked by the ghost of the “White Lady of Overtoun”, the widow of the local squire. He died in 1908 and she spent 30 years grieving before she took to haunting.

She has been “seen” walking the grounds of her old manor, Overtoun House, and in windows.

The phenomenon of the suicidal dogs merited an episode of the US TV series The Unexplained Files on the Discovery Channel. As far as I know no pets were harmed.

Cosmic perspective

THE Garden of Cosmic Speculation isn’t just a wonder of Scotland, it’s a wonder of the world. I haven’t actually been inside because it’s only open one day a year, usually on the first weekend in May when I’m always busy but this Covid thing has put an end to that so it’s now likely to be in October, if that third wave doesn’t overwhelm us.

It’s on a 30-acre site at Portrack House, off the A76 in Dumfriesshire, and it’s inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, like black holes and fractals.

The garden was created by its owner Charles Jenks. His late wife, Maggie Keswick Jenks, founded the cancer care centres named after her, dozens of which are located throughout the country, and on the one day that the garden opens the money collected goes towards the charity. Some of the world’s most renowned architects have designed the beautiful and life-enhancing buildings.

Blooming lovely

LOGAN Botanic Garden, on the

south-west tip of Scotland, isn’t just the country’s most exotic garden, it’s a little patch of paradise. You can walk through groves of eucalyptus and palm trees or stand in the shade – or shelter from the rain – of the massive, rhubarb-like gunnera plants.

Because of where it is the climate is warmed by the Gulf Stream so that plants from the southern hemisphere, from central America, flourish in the open – elsewhere they would have to be under glass. There’s also a conservatory for the rarest and most tender plants.

There’s even the Potting Shed Bistro for a repast.

The Italian job

IT’S not a return trip in a day but the Italian Chapel on the island of Lamb Holm on Orkney has reopened after the shutdown. Its two Nissen huts were transformed into a beautiful chapel by artist Domenico Chiocchetti and his colleagues, fellow Italian prisoners of war captured in North Africa during the Second World War.

IT is intricately and beautifully designed inside, with false walls and exquisite religious paintings, with the front having a built-on fascia making it look like a small Italian church.

The prisoners created it in their leisure time from working on creating the huge concrete barriers which closed off four of the entrances to Scapa Flow, after a German U-boat sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak in 1939 with the loss of 834 lives.

Somehow it’s redemptive.