"Old people, rich people, happy people, sad people": Driving into St Andrews with Martin

“It only takes ten minutes to drive you into town but there’s 800 years worth of history to give you,” said Martin Byrne.

"[That's] the reason we have to speak so fast in Scotland," he joked as we drove through fields of yellow. 

Byrne has been driving taxis in and out of St Andrews since 2003. Over the years, he’s accumulated a long list of stories and a whole lot of wisdom to pass on as he drives new students into town. 

“When I started taxiing, I didn’t know a lot of the answers,” Byrne said.

On the drive in from Edinburgh Airport, he points out Loch Leven Castle. When passengers started asking him about its history, he did some research and found that’s where they imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots back in the fifteenth century.

Others would ask him about the yellow fields around Fife. After a conversation with two American tourists, he learnt, “We call it rapeseed oil, they call it canola oil."

“People constantly keep asking me questions about the town that I grew up in that I don’t know," he said.

Having been a witness to the town's changes since his childhood, he sees students take their first glimpses of the town, and watches them pack up their suitcases for the final time.

“Students say first year goes in the blink of an eye," Byrne said. “They come back for fourth year and at the end of fourth year they don’t want to leave.” 

Byrne said St Andrews is “such a friendly place to study.”

For him, the town's value comes from meeting people from every walk of life: “I meet everybody. I meet famous people, old people, rich people, happy people, sad people. You’ll make friends from different subjects on different courses from all over the world. [It] doesn’t matter what you study."

On his airport runs during graduation weeks, he’s often waiting on “six or seven people hugging one person goodbye”.

Byrne grew up in St Andrews and went to high school here in the '80s, back when the town was bound by the North Sea, golf courses, and green belt.

“But it just keeps expanding," Byrne explained. "It’s very different from what it was when I grew up here.”

Before he started taxiing, Byrne worked at Fisher and Donaldson. “I couldn’t walk around town without every third person saying hi to me,” he said, “but I don’t recognise anyone in town anymore."

Like many locals, Byrne has had to relocate to Dundee. St Andrews has become “cripplingly expensive”, he explained. 

“I love and hate the Uni," Byrne admitted. “[I] love it because that’s where I make my money and it’s a great uni. I hate it for the fact that I can’t actually afford to live in the town that I grew up in.”

Still, Byrne thinks it's important that the locals accept the demographic of the town is skewed by a large student population: “The university dates back 1413, so if you want to live in St Andrews and you’re moaning about the students, you’re an idiot.”

Though Byrne spent most of his childhood in the town, most people find it hard to believe he’s from Scotland. He attributed this to growing up with “so many different accents around” — tourists in the summer and locals from all over.

“The [...] people I speak to, they speak so many different languages,”  he said.

Every time he meets new passengers, Byrne wishes he knew more languages: “In all my years of taxiing, if I tried to learn one language a year I’d know 22 languages by now.”

This diverse clientele consists largely of students and golfers, who he said shape the character of the town.

“If you’re not a student and you’re not a golfer, there isn’t actually much to do at all,” Byrne said.

His recommendations span across the three streets, starting with Tailend for fish and chips, the Keys for whiskey, and Fisher & Donaldson for a fudge donut.

Despite the changes, however, Byrne maintains that St Andrews is a great place to live: “If you live here you get your free education, healthcare, and golf.”

What’s left? Just a job. Byrne has his answer ready: “Open a Mexican restaurant — you’ll earn a fortune.”

He always asks students what they miss from home, apart from the obvious family and friends. “They all say Mexican food," Byrne said.

For students, Byrne recommends students take camping trip around the country, making the most of Scotland's lack of trespassing laws: “I say to students, [until] the age of 22 you’ve got the free bus pass. You can get a bus from St Andrews to Edinburgh, pitch up your tent in an appropriate place [...] as long as you’re not damaging it, and then you can go and explore Edinburgh [until] you’re bored.”

After Edinburgh, he recommends taking buses to Fort William, the Isle of Skye, Inverness, and finally Aberdeen, before making your way back to St Andrews. 

Byrne has taken the road into St Andrews for years now. It means more to him now than it did back when he started.

He had two passengers ask him to stop at the Swilken Bridge recently.

“When they came back they were crying,” he said.

They had brought their dad’s ashes to sprinkle on the Old Course. His dream had been to play on the course, Byrne explained.

“I didn’t even know them and I was crying," he said. "I grew up here and I didn’t even realise how lucky I was [to grow] up in St Andrews until then.”

Illustration by Marios Diakourtis