The sands of time: St Andrews beach reopens…eventually

A £55,000 project involving the stabilisation of the cliffs above the Castle Sands in St Andrews has been completed and the beach has reopened but only after council workers remembered to take the barriers down.

St Andrews councillor Brian Thomson told St Andrews Community Council he recently received confirmation from transportation services that the works had been completed at the end of November.

As of the weekend just past, however, the barriers preventing public access to the beach were still up apparently because the parks department had forgotten to take them down.

The barriers have now been removed.

The works programme had suffered numerous delays in the past due to contractual difficulties, which had seen the popular beach closed off to the public since April of 2011.

The smallest of the town’s beaches a favourite haunt of students and the venue for the traditional May Dip it was declared out of bounds by Fife Council following a landslide and because of fears that further erosion was possible.