North Berwick

North Berwick

The street where we live

Bass Rock

We spent three days in North Berwick and the East Lothian area.  Our apartment was just around the corner from one of the two beaches.  North Berwick is right on the mouth of the Firth of Forth and the North Sea.  Most days you can see across to the other side of the Firth.  There are also several islands off the coast; the most prominent is Bass Rock because it rises very high out of the water and is very white.  It is a major gannet nesting site.  It and the other islands also provide nesting places for seals and many other seabirds, including puffins, but those had mostly gone by the time we were there.  NB’s main tourist site therefore is the Scottish Seabird Center, about 3 blocks away. Besides lots of information about the birds, they have interactive cameras stationed on 4 islands.  You can move the camera view around 360 degrees and zoom in and out, so you can get a really close up look at some of the birds, or zoom out for a broad view.  This is how we discovered that Bass Rock is not white from all the bird guano, but because it is packed with white gannets.  You can go for your own look-see at www.seabird.org.

North Berwick Law

Harbor

The town itself is a good looking prosperous community.  The High Street with most of the businesses stretches for 4 -5 blocks parallel to the beach.  It had a good variety of restaurants and pubs.  The harbor itself is very old, from the 13^th century, when it was a pilgrimage stop for people wanting to cross the Firth on their way to St. Andrew’s.  They were going to pray to the saint, but nowadays the pilgrimage is for golf.  There are many courses in the area and in 2014 the British Open will be nearby.  Walking around the town, we came across a half a dozen historic plaques to locals who became famous golfers.  The promontory that the harbor is on sets off the sweep of the two beaches on either side.  The other main feature of the town is a tall basalt hill just on the outskirts, called the Law.  This part of Scotland is full of these volcanic remnants, and these tall isolated hills are all called laws.  We did not climb it.

North Berwick in the 1300s

Tantallon Castle

To the south of NB, there were two places we went to: Tantallon Castle and the town of Dunbar.  Tantallon is a ruined castle on the coast just across from Bass Rock.  It is hard for the pictures to

Courtyard of Tantallon Castle

give you a real sense of the scale of the place.  Two walls rose 5 stories and had halls and rooms and battlements.  The inside courtyard was mostly open to the sea because they didn’t need battlements on that side.  It was built around 1350, and survived various sieges brought about by the lord’s shifting intrigues with
the royalty.  It was finally rendered uninhabitable by Cromwell’s army.  I knew Cromwell had invaded and devastated Ireland.  I didn’t realize he had done the same to Scotland.  We really enjoyed wandering around.

View from the heights

Tantallon Castle about 1500

John Muir birthpalce

John Muir statue

The town of Dunbar is a little further along the coast.  It also has an intriguing harbor and was once a very busy fishing port.  Its new claim to fame is as the birthplace of John Muir, one of the founders of the environmental movement.  He lived there until he was 11 when the family moved to Wisconsin.  Now the small building has been turned into a good exhibit on his life and work.  I was very impressed with his writing:  “Around my native town of Dunbar, I loved to wander … along the seashore … and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle, when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one.”  It is especially helpful to imagine this said in Muir’s Scottish accent.

Entrance to Dirleton Castle

Courtyard

To the west of NB we visited another ruined castle in Dirleton.  The oldest parts date to the 13^th century, but it went through two other building phases when different families inherited it through marriage.  It has very good signage with pictures of what it looked like before it was a ruin.  The most impressive parts here, and distinct from the other castle, were the huge kitchen and bakery with gigantic fireplaces and ovens.  Also there is a very nice chapel off the hall.  The dungeon is right under it.  It is smaller than Tantallon, but seemed like a much more pleasant place to live.  It was also destroyed by Cromwell.

Saturday September 22, we had an uneventful drive back to Glasgow, about an hour and a half, turned in our car, and flew off to Vienna via Heathrow airport.  We thoroughly enjoyed our two weeks in Great Britain.

Kitchen fireplace

Dirleton Castle in the 1500s