Dunfermline Weekly 🎂 23 June 2024

First birthday! City coat of arms, Rosyth flooding, and more

🎂 This week marks Dunfermline Weekly’s first birthday! The first newsletter went out on 26 June 2023, and so the first year comes to a close.

I went into publishing DW with no expectations. Despite no attempts at marketing, it has managed to reach far beyond friends and family - the initial victims of my sharing of local news - and that alone is a pleasant surprise. Here’s to year two!

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🛡️ Dunfermline will be getting a new coat of arms as a city, with the proposed design being based off the old royal burgh coat of arms - a tower surrounded by two lions, but with addition of crowns on the lions and a lion and a unicorn supporting the shield on either side.

Historical coat of arms of the royal burgh of Dunfermline, edited from the scan of the Bond of Friendship with Trondheim

🏳️‍🌈 Fife Pride is taking place next Saturday, 29 June in Kirkcaldy. The march will be setting off at 13:00 from the Fife College campus, and head along High Street to the Town Square, where stalls and entertainment will continue until 18:30.

🔫 The old Debenhams in Kingsgate will become a foam dart gun warzone on 3 August in what is perhaps the most interesting way to use an empty retail unit.

🚌 Stagecoach has a list of proposed timetable changes to be put in place from 19 August - the end of school summer holidays. The biggest changes include route renumbering and changes for current routes 1, 2, 3 and 5, and introduction of a new route 5 from Ferrytoll via Rosyth and Duloch Park to the new Learning Campus. There is also a long list of minor changes to other services and several low usage routes are getting axed entirely. Consultation feedback form is available here.

🌊 Council has approved an emergency site visit in the frequently flooded area of Rosyth following last month’s rainfall. While the eastern end of the town, particularly around the Park Road primary school, has experienced flooding for decades, the frequency and scale of these incidents has been growing at an alarming rate in recent years. The site visit is to involve the council, residents, and multiple agencies, in order to identify possible improvements.

🚧 Roadworks at Bothwell Gardens started this week - or actually last Sunday, much to surprise of everyone including the council, as Newlay, contractor responsible for the works, has apparently jumped the gun and decided to disrupt traffic a day early. This resulted in an apology from the council and a detailed update on scheduling and reasons of the works. The roadworks have also significantly affected multiple Stagecoach routes passing through the roundabout.

🚧 Bear will be resurfacing M90 junction 1A Admiralty over four nights next weekend starting on Friday 28th. The entire roundabout and all slip roads will be closed between 20:00 and 6:00 each night. There will be no through road between Rosyth and Inverkeithing on these nights, other than via Fordell or Castlandhill.