St Andrews Pier runs out from the small harbour at the mouth of the Kinness Burn, below the cathedral and East Sands, about ten minutes’ walk from the town centre.
It is a working harbour pier rather than a pleasure pier — no arcades, no kiosks, no deck chairs. A stone breakwater with a raised walkway on top, the sea on both sides, and one of the best views in Scotland.
The pier was rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and a substantial part of the stone came from the ruined cathedral and the castle.
That was ordinary practice — the cathedral had been roofless since the Reformation and was regarded as a quarry — and it means the harbour wall you walk along is partly built from the largest church ever raised in Scotland.
The pier’s real fame is a university tradition.
In term time, after Sunday morning chapel at St Salvator’s, students walk in procession from the chapel through the town, down The Pends past the cathedral, and out along the pier — wearing the scarlet undergraduate gown that St Andrews students have worn since the seventeenth century.
They walk to the end, turn, and walk back along the raised upper walkway — a narrow ledge with no rail, which is part of the point.
It happens most Sundays in term, and the largest is the first Sunday of the new academic year, when the new intake joins in and the whole pier is red.
It is a genuine living tradition rather than a performance for visitors, and watching it from the harbour is one of the more memorable things you can do in St Andrews.
From the end of the pier, looking back: the harbour, the cathedral ruins on the skyline with St Rule’s Tower beside them, the castle on its promontory further along, and the town on the ridge above.
It is the view that appears on most photographs of St Andrews, and the reason is that there is nowhere else you can see the whole town, cathedral and coast in one frame.
Looking out: the North Sea, and on a clear day the coast running north towards Tentsmuir and the mouth of the Tay.
Free, open at all times.
Time: twenty minutes to walk out and back.
Location: at the harbour, below The Pends, ten minutes from the town centre and five from the cathedral.
Access: the lower level is reasonably even; the upper walkway has no railing and is not suitable for children who might run or for anyone unsteady. In wind or wet it is genuinely exposed.
Parking: at East Sands, charged.
Best time: early morning for the light on the cathedral, or a Sunday in term for the gowns.
East Sands beach is alongside.
The Pends, the fourteenth-century vaulted precinct gateway, is the walk up to the cathedral.
St Andrews Cathedral and St Rule’s Tower are five minutes above.
The harbour itself, small and working, with a handful of boats.
No — it is a working stone harbour pier with a walkway on top. There are no attractions on it.
A university tradition: students in scarlet gowns process out along the pier after Sunday chapel in term time, returning along the raised upper walkway.
It has no railing and is exposed. Fine for a steady adult in calm weather; not suitable for small children or in wind.
Partly — stone from the ruined cathedral and castle was used in the seventeenth-century rebuilding.
About twenty minutes to walk out and back.