IT WAS at approximately stupid o’clock in the morning that the Lemming and I met each other in the foyer of our Edinburgh hotel. My plan for the day had been to walk from Prestonpans to North Berwick and I still very much intended that that was what we’d do.
The complicating factor was that this rather hinged on my having walked from Edinburgh to Prestonpans the afternoon before and, well, I hadn’t. Consequently, we’d now be doing both walks in one go…
New Town
Rose Street
Getting up that early had negated any chance to get a hotel breakfast, but that was okay because the hotel’s breakfast would have been of sufficiently questionable quality that not getting one was arguably a win. Instead, we grabbed some suitable munchies from the Sainsbury’s Local at the eastern end of Rose Street and, in my case at least, munched them merrily as we headed along the southern edge of St Andrew Square.
St Andrew Square
St Andrew Square and its immediate environs were one of the first parts of Edinburgh’s New Town to be constructed in 1772, following a design by James Craig (1739-1795). It almost immediately became a fashionable address and remained so until the end of the 19th century, when its character started to morph from residential to commercial.
Its residents included such luminaries as the philosopher and economist David Hume (1711-1776), architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796) and Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868). As Lord Chancellor, the latter played a key role in the passing of both the Reform Act 1832 and Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Contrasting with the latter was merchant and politician Sir Lawrence Dundas (1712-1781), who owned slaves on Dominica and Grenada. His home – Dundas House – was actually designed by his neighbour, Sir William Chambers. In 1821, it became the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and is still its registered office, today.
Melville Monument
One of Sir Lawrence’s most enduring political opponents was a distant relative, Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), who rose to become a trusted right-hand man to prime minister William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) and who occupied several cabinet-level positions. He never actually lived in St Andrew Square but, at about the same time as the RBS was moving into Dundas House, construction of a column to commemorate him – the Melville Monument – began slap-bang in the middle of it anyway.
The monument was designed by William Burn (1789-1870) – who is more famous for his country houses in the Scottish Baronial style – with additional engineering advice from the accomplished lighthouse-builder, Robert Stevenson (1772-1850).
The statue atop the column is by Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841), who also designed a statue of Lord Melville’s boss that stands not too far away in George Street.
Old Town
High Street
From St Andrew Square, we took a right to get to Princes Street and then crossed over the top of Edinburgh Waverley station by means of North Bridge. This brought us to a junction with the High Street of Edinburgh’s Old Town, which forms part of the route informally named the Royal Mile. From that junction, we would then follow the Royal Mile down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Moubray House
Not far from where we joined the High Street stood Moubray House, which is not only one of the oldest buildings on the Royal Mile, but also one of the oldest occupied houses in Edinburgh. While the current structure is pretty old in itself, dating to a reconstruction in 1529, it built upon the foundations of an even older house, laid by Robert Moubray in 1477.
Moubray House was saved from disrepair in 1910 through acquisition by the Cockburn Association (est. 1875), an independent group championing conservation of Edinburgh’s heritage. The Association takes its name from the Edinburgh-born judge Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn (1779-1854) and takes to heart his admonition that:
‘Edinburgh is not exempt from the doom that makes everything spoilable.’
Notable residents of the house have included Scotland’s first eminent portrait painter George Jamesone (c. 1587-1644), the writer Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) –author of Robinson Crusoe (publ. 1719) – and Archibald Constable (1774-1827), who was an early proprietor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
John Knox House
Immediately next door to Moubray House is the similarly-aged John Knox House. This is named for the Protestant reformer John Knox (1514-1572) in the belief that he spent his final years there, which is utterly unsupported by any actual evidence (whereas he actually did live in Warriston’s Close, further up the Royal Mile, during the 1560s).
Even if the house’s history with its namesake is pure fantasy, belief in it prevented its demolition and replacement in the 1840s. It was saved by an alliance comprising the Free Church of Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Canongate Crossroads
Just 50 m east of John Knox House, the High Street ended at a crossroads, but the Royal Mile continued on as Canongate.
Stretching south from the crossroads was St Mary’s Street, while curving away to the north was Jeffrey Street. I glanced up the latter as I was just about to cross it and was surprised to see what looked like a very small castle. And then I realised I’d seen it several times before…
Governor’s House
The building was the Governor’s House of Calton Jail, both built in 1817 and designed by Archibald Elliot (1761-1823). It occupies an outcrop of Calton Hill and directly overlooks the platforms of Edinburgh Waverley. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d looked up at it from a train window and thought to myself ‘that can’t be part of Edinburgh Castle, it’s in the wrong place, so what is it?’ and then got distracted and so failed to look it up and find out.
The rest of Calton Jail was demolished in 1937 and its site is now occupied by St Andrew’s House, which houses the offices of the Scottish Government. The Governor’s House is the jail complex’s sole survivor and now serves as an additional government building; it is currently home to the Scottish Fiscal Commission.
Lady Glenorchy’s Chapel
Lady Glenorchy’s Chapel was founded by Willielma Campbell née Maxwell (1741-1786), the wealthy widow of John Campbell, Viscount Glenorchy (d. 1771), third son of the Earl of Breadalbane and Holland. Completed in 1774, it was one of several chapels that she founded.
Originally a chapel of ease, in 1837 it was promoted to the status of a quoad sacra church (i.e. a parish church whose ecclesiastical parish does not coincide with a civil parish). It didn’t get to enjoy this status for long though as the North British Railway (NBR) was authorised in 1844 and used the powers granted by its Act of Parliament to compulsorily purchase the church and demolish it, before obliterating its site with railway platforms.
Hill & Adamson
The Hill and Adamson studio, which took the chapel’s photo, was Scotland’s first photographic studio, albeit a short-lived one. Set up by David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) – who was a friend of Lord Cockburn – and Robert Adamson (1821-1848) in 1843, it lasted only five years before Adamson’s life was cut short by tuberculosis. Their studio had been close by, in Rock House on Calton Hill (I had unwittingly walked past its door on my previous walk).
Political Martyrs Monument
Erected in 1844 and designed by Thomas Hamilton (1784-1858), this obelisk was the brainchild of the Radical politician Joseph Hume (1777-1855). It celebrates five men – Thomas Muir (1765-1799), Thomas Fyshe Palmer (1747-1802), William Skirving (1745-1796), Maurice Margarot (1745-1815) and Joseph Gerrald (1763-1796) – who got a bit too enthused about the French Revolution and started talking about such utter fruit-loop craziness as universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. This got them convicted for sedition in 1794.
They were not martyred in a literal sense as none of them were executed, but were shipped off as convicts to New South Wales instead.
As a Radical – a reformist Whig faction that would become the left wing of the Liberal Party – Hume saw these men as heroes, transported for demanding democracy. And, from a modern perspective, it would be hard to argue otherwise. But ‘one man, one vote,’ had been a concept too far in 1794 when the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797) was failing badly to contain the spread of revolutionary ideas from France.
Cranston Street Police Box
As we continued down Canongate, the Lemming suddenly pointed out to me that I was obliviously walking past what was obviously an old police box. Specifically it had been the Cranston Street Police Box, standing at the junction of that street, and was one of 142 such boxes designed by city architect Ebenezer James MacRae (1881-1951) and installed in 1933.
Police boxes were, of course, a telephone booth network for the police. They provided a method of maintaining communication in a time when radios were anything but portable, and could be used to lock up a miscreant if that became necessary.
Of Edinburgh’s 142 boxes, just over half remain with 75 survivors. And, while this sounds like the city lost a lot (and it did) it is still doing way better than London, which now only has about one fifth of that number (half in the City, the rest in the wider metropolis). Edinburgh’s Cranston Street box was sold off by Lothian & Borders Police in 2012; it was now the Canongate Café and I, in my blinkered obliviousness, had acknowledged it only as a coffee kiosk.
Milton House Public School Police Box
A little further down Canongate, we passed a second such police box, standing vigil outside the Royal Mile Primary School.
Originally known as the Milton House Public School Police Box, after the school’s previous identity, this box was amongst the last tranche to be sold off, bought from Police Scotland in 2014. Four years later, the school, working with the community charity group at Citibank, converted it into the Book Box, a book swap library for both children and adults.
I rather like that Edinburgh has kept them, while finding them new roles in which to serve.
Holyrood Park
Queen’s Drive
At the end of Canongate we came to the Palace of Holyroodhouse – the King’s official Scottish residence – and its neighbour, the Scottish Parliament Building. These are both remarkable buildings in their own way – the first is a Royal palace, after all, while the other is a paragon of ‘what the hell were they thinking?’ architecture – but we merely noted them in passing.
We turned south from Holyrood onto Queen’s Drive, the road that circumnavigates Holyrood Park. Then, despite our final destination lying eastwards, we went west instead, following Queen’s Drive anticlockwise.
Salisbury Crags
Heading in this direction meant that the Lemming and I would be passing beneath the part of the Arthur’s Seat hill called Salisbury Crags. This is a craggy cliff that forms its western flank. As mentioned previously, the path directly under the cliff – the Radical Road – was closed and fenced off, this being a far cheaper remedy for falling rocks than, stay, stabilising the cliff face.
The Radical War
The Radical Road’s alliterative name stems from its creation as a make-work scheme for unemployed weavers who were Radicals in the same vein as Joseph Hume. They had rioted in 1820 in the hope of forcing the government to enact Luddite legislation, an event labelled the Radical War. Driving this unrest was industrialisation, which brought efficiency advantages to textile mill owners but had halved the earnings of weavers just between 1800 and 1808.
While the protests failed and its leaders were executed, many were sympathetic to the weavers’ plight. It was the novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) who suggested employing the weavers to build the track under Salisbury Crags. He and Lord Melville also organised a visit of George IV to Scotland as public relations measure to increase monarchist sentiment and reduce Radical support.
The visit not only succeeded in those aims but also accidentally launched modern tartans as a thing. Although tartan patterns went back centuries – despite being banned between 1746 and 1782 – the modern, romanticised concept with specific tartans for specific clans mostly developed to cash in on fashion, after King George wore a kilt.
John Muir Way
The corner-cutting footpath brought us to a roundabout from which Queen’s Drive would continue around the foot of Arthur’s Seat, which was more than a little tempting. But instead, we tore ourselves away from its delights and veered south to cross Duddingston Low Road. I had thought we might need to walk on this for an unpleasant 300 m or so, but the Lemming spotted a footpath screened by some trees and we plunged through the undergrowth to access it.
We had now joined the John Muir Way. This was a long-distance footpath from Helensburgh to Dunbar established in 2014 and named for Scottish-born conservationist John Muir (1838-1914), who emigrated to the United States and was one of the founders of the US National Park Service.
While I had walked to this point from Helensburgh, hardly any of my route had coincided with theirs. For the rest of this trip, that would change. To start with, it led us to someone’s access road, from which we then branched off onto the former alignment of the St Leonards Branch of the 1826 Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway. This had initially resisted the lure of then-modern steam technology, preferring to stick with tried-and-tested horse power, a policy that earned it the nickname of the Innocent Railway.
Innocent Railway
Non-Standard Gauge
The Innocent Railway had laid its tracks with a 4 ft 6 in gauge to match those used by local coal pits. This was slightly narrower than what would come to be known as standard gauge (4 ft 8½ in), but the Gauge Act didn’t make that a national standard until 1846, so they can perhaps be forgiven their lack of clairvoyance. By the time it had, the NBR had just purchased the Innocent Railway, and they set about re-laying its tracks to standard gauge, at some considerable effort and expense.
St Leonards Station
The St Leonards Branch was the earliest part of the Innocent Railway to be built, with other branches to Leith and Fisherrow to follow. Of course, before the other routes were built, the St Leonard’s line wasn’t technically a branch but the railway in its entirety. It had terminated at St Leonards Station, which was built as a coal depot. Only the station’s goods shed remains, long since redeveloped into housing.
While intended as a freight railway, The Innocent quickly adapted to also carry passengers. However, its 1845 acquisition by the NBR saw these rerouted from St Leonards to its North Bridge station (now Edinburgh Waverley). From 1846 onwards, the branch was once again freight-only, as had been originally envisioned.
St Leonards Tunnel
St Leonards station had been sited just west of where we joined the alignment, accessed by a tunnel now behind us.
The reason that the tunnel was the only part of the railway not ‘innocent,’ was that it contained an incline (see the angle of the lights in the photo). This was only 1 in 30 or 3.4°, but that was still too steep for horse-drawn coal trains. As a result, the tunnel was the only steam-powered part of the railway, using a pair of static winding engines to haul the coal wagons up and down the slope.
Duddingston Loch
The Innocent Railway carried us along a south-eastward alignment that passed south of Duddingston Loch. Along with Lochend Loch, this is one of two survivors of half a dozen natural lochs within Edinburgh, with the others having been drained and reclaimed. Edinburgh Waverley sits in the eastern end of the former basin of the Nor’ Loch, for instance.
In 1778, the Duddingston Loch Hoard – a collection Late Bronze Age weapons and other objects dating to between 1000 and 800 BC – was found in the loch by workers dredging for marl. This is now in the care of the National Museum of Scotland.
We couldn’t actually see Duddingston Loch on account of a big hedge and lots of trees but I’m willing to trust that it was still there and no one had sneakily drained it.
Braid Burn Railway Bridge
While St Leonards wasn’t the first railway tunnel (that accolade goes to the 1793 Fritchley Tunnel in Derbyshire), it is nonetheless a pretty early example. Another early example of railway infrastructure awaited us down the line in the form of Braid Burn Railway Bridge.
A cast-iron skew bridge with an 18 ft span, this isn’t particularly interesting to look at but is historically significant as its cast iron beams are the earliest extant examples of their type. It was constructed in 1831 by Shotts Iron Company (est. 1801) for the cost of £133 10s, which is roughly equivalent to a modern price of about £11.6 k. It was designed by the railway’s engineer, James Jardine (1776-1858), who also designed St Leonards Tunnel.
Braid Burn
The Braid Burn that flows underneath it is a small stream rising in the Pentland Hills and meeting the Firth of Forth at Portobello. Its only real claim to fame is a literary reference, being called out by name in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (publ. 1961) by Dame Muriel Spark (1918-2006).
Not that it has a significant role, or anything: Jean Brodie and her former pupil, Sandy Stranger,merely look upon it from the Braid Hills Hotel. The hotel exists in real life, and is three and half miles upstream from Braid Burn Railway Bridge.
The Sub
The Innocent Railway path crossed over Duddingston Road West but then came to the junction where the 1884 Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway (‘the Sub’) formerly met the Innocent Railway’s alignment.
Just west of this, on the extant curve of the Sub, was the site of Duddingston & Craigmillar Railway Station. This was opened in 1884 but closed in 1962 when the Sub was closed to passenger traffic. The Sub remained open as a freight line, allowing goods trains to avoid passing through Waverley, and continued to occupy the Innocent Railway alignment heading eastwards. Accordingly, the footpath now ran beside, and not on, the track-bed.
Duddingston House
The path passed about 300 m south of Duddingston House, a mansion built in 1768 for James Hamilton, 8th Earl of Abercorn (1712-1789) and designed by Sir William Chambers. Lord Abercorn had bought the property in 1745 from Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682-1761) – arguably the most powerful man in Scotland until the rise of Lord Melville.
1745 was the year of the Jacobite Rising of Bonnie Prince Charlie (1720-1788) and his cavalry camped in the house’s grounds prior to the Battle of Prestonpans, the rising’s first significant engagement. This was a Jacobite victory, a Highland charge having broken the government regulars. The Highland charge would continue to be a devastating tactic until counter-measures were developed, culminating in its failure and a decisive Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746.
Prestonfield House was built for merchant Sir James Dick (c. 1644-1728), who engaged Sir William Bruce (c. 1630-1710) to design it. It has been a hotel since the 1960s.
Bingham & Brunstane
Niddrie Burn
As the path headed east it broke out of its hedged constraints and passed through a green recreational space south of the Edinburgh suburb of Bingham. Here, it encountered Niddrie Burn and started to follow that downstream, which meant that the Lemming and I did the same.
This park-like perambulation was briefly interrupted by having to cross the moderately busy Duddingston Park South or A6106, but then resumed thereafter. We headed east, still following Niddrie Burn, before passing under Milton Link, which was part of the A1 and way busier and more dangerous than that A6106 had been; the underpass was appreciated.
Brunstane Station
On the far side of the A1, we found the footbridge at Brunstane railway station temporarily closed, forcing us to take the alternative step-free route instead. Somehow, we coped.
Brunstane was opened by Railtrack in 2002 as a new passenger station on what was then a freight-only remnant of the otherwise disused Waverley Route to Carlisle. Its opening was part of the Edinburgh Crossrail project, with trains terminating at the next stop, Newcraighall.
The Waverly Route was opened by the NBR in 1849 and mostly closed, care of Dr Richard Beeching, in 1969. In 2015, it reopened to Tweedbank as the Borders Railway, turning Newcraighall into a ‘through’ station.
Brunstane Burn Path
Moving on from Brunstane Station, we soon found ourselves on the Brunstane Burn Path, a delightfully leafy footpath that ran alongside the Brunstane Burn. This was exactly the same stream as the Niddrie Burn except that it had decided to change its name for some reason. We didn’t ask why; we simply respected its choices.
I really enjoyed this section of path, but it couldn’t last forever. After only a mile, it came to an end, spitting us out onto the A199. There a sign welcomed us to Musselburgh and East Lothian, although not necessarily in that order.
Musselburgh
Memory and Reflection
As hanging around outside it was not going to achieve anything, we entered Musselburgh and went in search of breakfast. This involved heading east along the A199, which was here called Edinburgh Road, towards Fisherrow Harbour.
On the way, we passed a mussel that we couldn’t eat for breakfast on account of it being 12 ft high and 6 ft wide and made of stainless steel.
Titled Memory and Reflection, this sculpture by Michael Johnson is one of two artworks commissioned by Tesco in 2018 at a combined cost of £76 k. Not, I hasten to add, because the supermarket chain felt generous of their own accord, but because of the council’s Percent for Art policy, which made it a condition of planning consent for their store.
Musselburgh Beach
My need for breakfast was answered by Sizzlers, a burger van/kiosk facing Mussleburgh Beach, which supplied us both with bacon rolls and cups of tea. This was the Ultimate Food of Walking, and far better than mussels, whatever their size.
Musselburgh Beach lies directly west of Fisherrow Harbour and, from it, I could look eastwards, past the harbour piers, along the coast we had yet to walk. Far off in the distance, jutting up from the horizon, was North Berwick Law.
A conical volcanic plug, the law is 187 m high, which is taller even than stainless steel mussels, but not that huge by hill standards. The flatness of the surrounding land really makes it stand out, however. And, given that North Berwick was our destination, this gave us an ideal landmark against which to judge our progress through the day.
Fisherrow Harbour
Fisherrow was formerly a separate fishing village but has long since become a part of Musselburgh. Both of those names suggest a long association with the sea and Fisherrow has had a harbour since at least 1592, when it was included on a list of towns and havens.
The current harbour dates in part to 1743, when it was rebuilt on old foundations – the east pier still stands from this time, albeit with subsequent repairs and a 1939 extension. The west pier was rebuilt in 1845.
Today, the fishing boats are scarce and small leisure craft shelter here instead.
Fisherrow & Musselburgh Stations
Between 1831 and 1847, Fisherrow station stood next to the harbour, the terminus of the Innocent Railway’s Fisherrow Branch. This closed to passengers when the NBR bought the line, and a new sub-branch off it was built to a station at Musselburgh. This closed to passengers in 1964 and to freight in 1970.
A new Musselburgh station was built by British Rail in 1988 on the East Coast Main Line, right out on the southern edge of town. This was far more convenient to the railway but rather less so to its passengers.
Fisherrow Sands
When we had eaten our bacon rolls and drunk our teas and stared at North Berwick Law thinking ‘that’s actually quite a long way,’ we set about trying to make it less long.
We began by heading east along a promenade that faced onto Fisherrow Sands, the beach on the far side of the harbour. This was all very pleasant and perfectly civilised but could only go on for two thirds of a mile before the River Esk got in our way.
River Esk
The river – also known as the ‘Lothian Esk’ to differentiate it from all the other rivers that take their name from the Brythonic word isca, meaning ‘water’ – was a sizeable barrier to progress and meant that we were going to need a bridge. As luck would have it, there were several, but the John Muir Way took the laziest option by crossing on the first one that we found upstream.
Once across, we headed back downstream to the point opposite where the promenade had ended. This was a road called Goose Green Place.
Arrow? What Arrow?
Crossing at that first bridge meant that we never ventured far enough upstream to see Tesco’s other planning consent bribe sculpture, which was a life-size bronze archer by artists Svetlana Kondakova and Maja Quille.
To complement this statue, a heritage trail around the town is thematically waymarked by steel arrows, as if the archer had been shooting indiscriminately at landmarks.
Levenhall Links
During WW2, when the concrete arrow was created, following its direction on foot would have immediately put us onto the beach of Musselburgh Sands. This had an extensive intertidal zone with large mussel beds (hence the town’s name), but no longer.
In 1964, the South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB) knew they were going to need somewhere to dump significant quantities of pulverised fuel ash from Cockenzie Power Station. Their solution was to construct a concrete sea wall, enclosing an area they filled with the ash, reclaiming land from the sea. Where once there was Musselburgh Sands, we now find Levenhall Links and the Musselburgh Lagoons.
‘Links’ is the usual Scottish term for sand dunes, and the terrain is certainly vegetated like that at the edge. But it’s also quite flat and rather more park-like further in. We weren’t further in, though, so we only saw the tufty grass and the broad gravel path by the sea wall.
Musselburgh Lagoons
The reclaimed land continues to be something of a work in progress. Just a year before our visit, a new wader scrape – a shallow lagoon for wading birds – and bird-watching hides had been opened to the public at the western end near the Esk. This scrape was so new it was not yet shown on any maps I had with me.
Towards the eastern end of the reclaimed land, we came to a sign telling us that we were now where Morrison’s Haven used to be and that the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh (where cleugh is Scots for a gully or ravine) was fought nearby.
The Rough Wooing
The 1547 Battle of Pinkie Cleugh was the last pitched battle between the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland and was a continuation of Henry VIII’s so-called Rough Wooing, which was a war to force the betrothal of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542- 1587) to his son, later Edward VI (1537-1553).
Henry had actually died eight months earlier, but that didn’t stop Edward’s uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset (1500-1552), who was now Lord Protector, from carrying on with the plan. Trying to stop him was his opposite number, James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, the Regent of Scotland. What the two child monarchs wanted didn’t matter; they were minors and their regents held the power!
Battle of Pinkie Cleugh
Obviously, the battle wasn’t fought at Morrison’s Haven or it would have a different name. In fact it mostly seems to have been fought in Howe Mire, a boggy area near to Pinkie Cleugh. But Somerset’s camp before the battle lay between the haven and Drummohr. He also had 34 warships sitting in the Firth of Forth under the command of Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln (1512–1585). These he used as naval artillery.
The battle was a remarkable example of early modern warfare, with well-coordinated combined arms action. It was probably the largest battle ever fought on Scottish soil, with around 23,000 on the Scottish side and 19,000 on the English.
Despite numerical superiority and home ground advantage the Scots were soundly defeated. Estimates of their losses vary wildly from about 5,000 to an improbable 15,000 but, even at the lower limit, that’s a quarter of the army. But though the English won the battle, they went on to lose the war and the Scots smuggled Mary abroad to their French allies.
Galley Subtle
Captained by Richard Brooke (d. 1569), Galley Subtle fired some of the opening shots of the battle, which had initially consisted of the two commanders just moving their cavalry about. A shallow-draught oared galley, Galley Subtle could be manoeuvred close to shore without serious risk of running aground, which put her and others like her in a perfect position to open fire on the Scottish cavalry when it trotted unsuspecting into range.
Five days after the battle, Galley Subtle rowed up the Firth of Forth to Blackness Castle and captured three ships at harbour: Mary Willoughby, Anthony of Newcastle and Bosse. Well, technically, she recaptured the first two, both being English ships that had previously been captured by the Scots.
Then, five days after that, Galley Subtle captured Broughty Castle. Although, in that case, she just fired three shots and the castle surrendered without resistance.
Prestonpans
Morrison’s Haven
Morrison’s Haven already existed in some form in 1547. Originally called Newhaven, it was not intended for warships but for coal ships, James V (1512-1542) having authorised the monks of Newbattle Abbey to build it in 1526. They were some of the earliest – possibly the earliest – coal miners in Scotland.
In 1542, the monks leased it to Alexander Acheson of Gosford, resulting in the alternative name Acheson’s Haven. This is how it would have likely been known when Pinkie Cleugh hosted its battle.
By 1587, Newbattle Abbey had fallen victim to the Reformation and its estate became that of former abbot Mark Kerr (d.1584), who had cunningly converted to Protestantism to safeguard his wealth and power. His son, Mark Kerr, 1st Earl of Lothian (1553-1609) sold off Prestongrange – which had literally once been a grange i.e., a farm supporting the priests – to John Morrison (d. 1615), a burgess of Edinburgh, bringing its name up to date.
Prestongrange Colliery & Railway
The business of both coal mine and harbour boomed for the next three centuries. In 1877, an industrial mineral railway was laid to connect the one more directly to the other and also to the NBR main line.
Unfortunately, all this local prosperity stalled in the 20th century. In the 1920s, the coal mine began to falter. The harbour saw its last coal ship in 1931 and then closed in 1936. The colliery limped on until 1962, when it was finally put out of its misery by the British Coal Board. A few years after that, Cockenzie Power Station’s ash-dumping started, and now the harbour is completely filled in.
Some railway infrastructure still persists as a part of the Prestongrange Museum (an industrial heritage collection).
Entering Prestonpans
The footpath we were on joined the B1348 at Cuthill on the western edge of Prestonpans, which had once been the mineworkers’ village. The B-road then plunged into Prestonpans proper, turning into its High Street. Apart from one brief diversion closer to the shoreline we would mostly just stick with that street on our passage through the town.
Prestonpans gets its name from another lucrative industry practised by Newbattle’s monks, namely panning for salt. Its name literally is ‘priests’ town (salt-) pans.’ In addition to salt and coal, it also produced both beer and soap in the past but, these days, it’s mostly a dormitory town for Edinburgh.
The Goth
The most famous and successful of Prestonpans’ breweries had been John Fowler & Co., which was in business from 1720 until 1962.
A microbrewery briefly tried to resurrect its name in 2004, operating out of the Gothenburg pub (est. 1908 and inevitably known as ‘The Goth’). While that venture failed, the Goth is still open and was able to sell us refreshing beers of a non-Prestonpans provenance to celebrate our having just finished yesterday’s walk.
Totem Pole
A beer and a break did us both a power of good and we emerged from the Goth ready and eager to start the walk I’d actually planned for this day. And then, in the car park directly opposite, something offered itself as a starting post for this stage.
Yes, bizarrely, that’s a totem pole, which is hardly the most culturally Scottish of objects. Even more bizarrely, it’s not even the first one I’ve seen.
This one was a gift to Prestonpans from Vancouver Island in 2006. It was carved from red cedar by three people, two of them Squamish – Xwalacktun and Tawx’sin Yexwello – which gives the thing authenticity, and one Scottish, namely sculptor Kenny Grieve.
Its designs are meant to evoke past Prestonpans industry and to reference its famous battle. Actually, let’s talk about that…
Jacobite Rising of 1745
For a battle that lasted for less than half an hour, the 1745 Battle of Prestonpans looms large in Prestonpans’ history and indeed that of Scotland and the UK in general. It was the first significant battle of the Jacobite Rising of 1745, that being Bonnie Prince Charlie’s attempt to reclaim the throne for the House of Stuart.
The 1745 rising would prove to be the fourth and final one (after previous failed risings in 1689, 1715 and 1719) and, to begin with, it certainly looked as though things might be different this time!
Charles had French backing, France being at war with Great Britain and several other countries in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). It saw in him an opportunity to open a new front against its British enemy, while he saw in France the ally he so desperately needed.
Battle of Prestonpans
Charles travelled secretly to Glenfinnan, where he raised his standard in August and then moved quickly to capture Edinburgh. Government forces under Sir John Cope (1688-1760) scrambled to oppose him but Cope was largely hampered by the poor quality of the troops he had available (the better ones being abroad on the continent, fighting France and her allies). Unfortunately, he failed to recognise this fact and went into the battle overconfident.
In short, the government lines evaporated in the face of a Highland charge, giving Bonnie Prince Charlie a speedy and morale-boosting victory!
Of course, he would then go on to overextend himself invading England, quarrel with his own commanders and, the following year, lose disastrously at Culloden, crushing his chances forever. But for now this new rising looked unstoppable!
War Memorial
Making our way through Prestonpans, the Lemming and I soon encountered a couple of statues depicting British Army soldiers attired for later wars.
The first of these was Prestonpans War Memorial, unveiled in 1922 to commemorate the dead of WW1 (1914-1918). It depicts a soldier of the Royal Scots standing atop a nine-feet high pedestal. The soldier himself is slightly larger-than-life, being seven feet tall, and was sculpted by William Birnie Rhind (1853-1933).
Further names were later added to the memorial when WW1 failed to be ‘the war to end all wars,’ as proven by the occurrence of WW2 (1939-45).
Thomas Alexander Statue
The statue on the right, above, is a memorial to Dr Thomas Alexander (1812-1860), a military surgeon who was born in Prestonpans and rose to become Director-General of the Medical Department of the British Army. He served in the 1850-53 Xhosa War in South Africa, and then the 1853-56 Crimean War, where he met and befriended the nurse Florence Nightingale (1820-1910).
Dr Alexander shared Florence’s conviction that then-current medical and nursing practices were badly in need of reform and, as he rose in authority and influence, he would enact several changes in standards of medicine and care.
His statue, sculpted by Wiliam Brodie (1815-1881), was erected in 1862. Today, it is surrounded by the Coronation Gardens, which were laid out in 1953 to commemorate the coronation of Elizabeth II (1926-2022).
Burns Memorial Shelter
Directly opposite Dr Alexander’s statue and the Coronation Gardens was the smaller and less floral Burns Memorial Garden. This contained two things, one of which was the Sculpture by the Sea, a 1968 abstract sculpture by Leslie Frank Chorley (1918-1981) representing local industry; this was not my cup of tea at all.
The other appeared to be the illegitimate offspring of a gaol cell and a bus shelter:
The above was actually the Burns Memorial Shelter, erected in 1959 by the Airts Burns Club (est. 1934) to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns (1759-1796).
The interior back wall was decorated with a 2005 mural by artist Kate Hunter, illustrating Burns’s poem Tam O’Shanter and, I’m sure it was probably lovely. However, with the door padlocked and the latticed windows admitting little light, it was kind of hard to make it out any better than my photograph shows.
Preston Tower
Directly behind Dr Alexander’s statue, but hidden in my photo by an inconvenient tree, stood Preston Tower. Although ‘stood’ is perhaps overstating it, as this 14th-century keep is now ruined. This not an unfamiliar state to it, for this unfortunate fortification was burnt down during the Rough Wooing in 1544, again by Oliver Cromwell in 1650 and then again by accident in 1663.
Preston Tower played no part in the Battle of Prestonpans, being one mile too far west and already ruined, but I’m sure either Sir John Cope or Bonnie Prince Charlie would have happily set it aflame, had it been closer to hand.
Fowler’s Court
Continuing east along the High Street, the Lemming and I soon passed the former site of John Fowler & Co’s brewery. This is now occupied by a block of residential flats – Fowler’s Court, erected in 1991.
Prestonlinks Colliery
Just past Fowler’s Court, the John Muir Way veered off the high street to rejoin the shoreline, which was once again very different to how it had looked on early Ordnance Survey maps.
In this case, it was due in part to Prestonlinks Colliery, a mine which was sunk in 1899 and which had its own rail spur, and in part to Cockenzie Power Station, which obliterated its site following the mine’s closure in 1964.
Cockenzie Power Station
A coal-fired power station, Cockenzie’s two enormous chimneys dominated the local coastline from 1967, when it was opened by the SSEB, until 2015, when the board’s successor, Scottish Power, tore its buildings down.
The cause of Cockenzie’s demise wasn’t that it had become uneconomic, nor that it had exceeded its expected lifespan, but rather environmental legislation. The UK’s least carbon-efficient power station according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, Cockenzie was an environmental nightmare and wasn’t remotely compliant with the EU’s 2001 Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD).
The LCPD aimed to control sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and dust emissions from large combustion plants. Because it was built before 1987, Cockenzie was able to opt out of that legislation, but only on two conditions: one was reduced hours of operation, the other was closure by the end of 2015.
Grinding Ring and Balls
The pier is not quite the only remnant of Cockenzie Power Station. As the path turned to veer inland again, it passed the civic artwork unforgettably titled Grinding Ring and Balls. This is not exactly a sculpture, but rather an artistic arrangement of exactly what its name says:
Getting efficiency out of a coal-fired power station is largely about getting the coal to burn hotly and quickly, and that requires the maximum possible surface area. The secret to getting that is to have the smallest possible coal particles, which is achieved by turning it from lumps of coal into dust.
The device that ‘dustifies’ coal lumps is a terrifyingly but accurately-named pulverising mill. It’s basically a big cylindrical tumbler. The coal goes inside with a load of steel balls (as shown) and the tumbler rotates until the balls have pulverised the coal. The ring in the photo is structural from one of the ends of the tumbler.
The grinding ring and balls shown are the genuine article, taken from one of the power station’s pulverising mills, During their operational lifetime, they pulverised an estimated 500,000 tonnes of coal, so they’ve earned themselves a rest.
Cockenzie & Port Seton
Cockenzie Harbour
The reason the path had veered inland again, was that it needed to go around Cockenzie Harbour, as did we, if we didn’t want to swim.
A harbour of sorts dates back to at least 1592, when Cockenzie (Cùil Choinnich, ‘cove of Kenneth’) was recorded as being a free haven. This village was made a burgh by James VI in 1591 and, in 1600, he raised local landowner Robert Seton, 8th Lord Seton (1553-1603) to the title of Earl of Winton.
The Earl’s eldest but unstable son, Robert junior (d. 1634), went mad on his wedding night – as demonstrated by his emptying a chamber pot down his bride’s cleavage! – and was duly confined, allowing the second son, George (1584-1650) to succeed to the title and estate. Circa 1630, George built a proper harbour.
In 1722, the harbour was rebuilt and extended by George’s grandson, George Seton (1678-1749), the 5th Earl, and then rebuilt again in 1835 by the civil engineer Robert Stevenson, who must have been taking a break from his usual practice of designing lighthouses.
Tranent to Cockenzie Waggonway
While he was improving the harbour, the 5th Earl Seton also constructed the previously-mentioned Tranent to Cockenzie Waggonway, which may well have been the first such tramway in Scotland. This was, you’ll note, a whole century earlier than the Innocent Railway.
The 5th earl was a committed Jacobite and would have been delighted when Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces charged to victory across his tramway tracks, had he lived to see it. He had taken an active part in the Jacobite Rising of 1715, supporting Charles’s father, the ‘Old Pretender,’ James Stuart (1688-1766). But, like those that came after it, this rising had failed leading to his incarceration in the Tower of London under sentence of death. Not beaten yet, he effected a miraculous escape by cutting through the bars of his windows and died in French exile, his earldom forfeit as a traitor.
The Tranent to Cockenzie Waggonway proved to be rather more enduring than its creator or his title. Wooden-railed to begin with, it converted to iron rails in 1815 and connected to the NBR main line in 1846. While the part between the main line and the harbour was later abandoned, the section between that line and Tranent remained in use as a railway line until 1959.
The arms of the Seton Earls of Winton, who dwelt in Seton House, quartered three crescents within a tressure, representing Seton, with the three garbs (i.e. wheatsheaves) of Buchan. Over all was an inescutcheon depicting a twelve-pointed star within a tressure; this was an augmentation of honour, representing the earldom.
Port Seton Harbour
Just a third of a mile east of Cockenzie Harbour, we found ourselves looking at another one. This was Port Seton Harbour, constructed in 1656 by George Seton, 4th Earl of Winton (c. 1641-1704), father to the Jacobite jailbreaker. He named it ‘Port Seton’ to differentiate it from the existing harbour at Cockenzie. And because he could.
The harbour was busy through the 18th century, exporting coal to Edinburgh and salt to the Hanseatic League, as noted by Daniel Defoe who visited in 1755. But, following the flight of the 5th earl, the harbour felt into disrepair and had become almost unusable by 1810.
In 1880, it was rebuilt by the Stevenson brothers David (1815-1886) and Thomas (1818-1887), two of Robert Stevenson’s equally lighthouse-building sons, with the works funded by Francis Wemyss-Charteris, 9th Earl of Wemyss (1795-1883), who owned the nearby Gosford Estate.
Today, Port Seton remains one of the few East Lothian ports to maintain a small fishing fleet, but is mostly in use as a harbour for leisure craft.
Ice Cream Van
It may not be a lighthouse but the vehicle in the photo above may well be the classiest ice cream van in the world. It’s almost certainly the only Rolls-Royce one.
It is a Rolls Royce Twenty, a ‘small car’ model in production from 1922 to 1929, which was the first Rolls-Royce designed for the owner to drive, rather than be chauffeured. It belongs to ice cream manufacturers S Luca of Musselburgh and is used by them to cater events such as weddings.
This Twenty was made in 1923 and bought second-hand by S Luca in 1937, who then had it converted into the ice cream van it still is today.
Not that Rolls Royce sold completed off-the-shelf cars, that would never do! No, they sold you a chassis and then you paid for a coachbuilder to add custom bodywork to your personal specification; the coachbuilder for this one was Hooper & Co. of Westminster (1805-1959), who initially built it as a limousine.
S Luca
S Luca has been operating an ice cream parlour in Musselburgh since 1908, when it was opened by Italian immigrant Luca Scappaticcio (1884-1970).
Showing a common-sense gift for marketing, he swapped his name and initial around from ‘L Scappaticcio’ to ‘S Luca’ because he wanted to be sure his Scottish customers could actually pronounce it.
The firm is still in business in 2024, now run by his grandchildren, and this cunning ploy probably helped with that longevity.
Links Road
From Port Seton harbour, the John Muir Way diverted very briefly back onto the B1348 (now Links Road), but this was useful because it presented us with Port Seton Co-op, from which we bought sandwiches for our lunch.
Waymarks then put us on a promenade for half a mile until we hit the end of Port Seton and returned reluctantly to the B-road.
Seton Sands
As it turned out, the B-road ran fairly close to the shore, overlooking the rocky rather than sandy expanse of the optimistically-named Seton Sands. Initially, a caravan park by the same name occupied its inland side and, no sooner had we put this behind us, than the John Muir Way abandoned the road, putting some trees and other vegetation between it and the traffic.
Longniddry & Gosford Bay
Longniddry Bents
To begin with, it was quite pleasant, certainly more so than the B-road, or the A198, which it turned into. But we were, of course, having altogether too easy a time of it, and that couldn’t be allowed. The heavens opted to up the difficulty level by dropping water on our heads.
The rain started off as a sufficiently light patter that we didn’t even put our coats on. This apparently offended the Weather Gods, who like their efforts properly appreciated. The rain then became heavier, and somehow wetter and colder, as we followed the curve of the coast around the beach called Longniddry Bents.
Ferny Ness
We were soaked, chilled and generally losing heart by the time the path spat us out into a car park on the low headland of Ferny Ness. There, however, we witnessed our salvation in the form of Alandas fish & chips van/kiosk.
It wasn’t fish and chips that we wanted, though it was a mildly tempting idea, but cups of hot tea – the universal panacea!
The hot tea soon worked its magic in impressive manner, not only warming our bodies and cheering our hearts but also, somehow, actually stopping the rain.
Gosford Bay
By now, the coast had curved around sufficiently that we were heading north instead of east. Ahead of us, in this direction, was now Gosford Bay – another expanse of rocks and sand, with anti-tank cubes half-buried along its margin.
As we started along the edge of the bay we encountered a couple coming the other way who puzzled us greatly. They had no coats nor umbrellas and yet weren’t wet. There was no car up ahead they could have come from, nor a building close enough that they could have set off from it after the rain had stopped falling. It was as if they just materialised out of thin air, manifested by the power of our magical tea.
Perplexed as we were, we concluded that we might be well advised to soak up and neutralise the overly-potent magic tea with sandwiches. And the anti-tank blocks made the perfect seat for a lunch stop, or so we thought. A sudden noise of distress alerted me to the flaw in this plan as the Lemming, ever true to his name, promptly managed to fall off them.
Gosford House
When our sandwiches were eaten and the last of our tea drunk, we continued up the shore of Gosford Bay. This soon brought us to the gate of Gosford House. Until 2009, this was the family seat of the Charteris family, the Earls of Wemyss and March. Since then, the 13th and current earl, James Charteris, has chosen to live at Stanway House in Gloucestershire.
At one time, the home of the Achesons (as in Acheson’s Haven), Gosford came into the possession of Francis Wemyss Charteris (1723-1808), 7th Earl of Wemyss in 1781, when he bought it as somewhere to live while Amisfield House in Haddington was being remodelled. He had clearly been bitten by the home improvement bug because, as soon as Amisfield House was ready to moved back into in 1790, he had Gosford House rebuilt to a design by Robert Adam (1728–1792).
In 1891, Francis Richard Charteris, the 10th earl, had the wings rebuilt again, this time to designs by the architect William Young (1843-1900).
The arms of the Charteris Earls of Wemyss quarter a blue fess on silver within a red tressure (for Charteris) with a red lion rampant on gold (for Wemyss). The latter were originally the arms of MacDuff, the Wemysses being MacDuff descendants.
Harestanes Bridge
About two thirds of the way up the bay, the road and path both crossed Harestanes Burn and then turned inland together. We paused for a moment by Harestanes Bridge to look back once more to Arthur’s Seat.
Harestanes Wood
We then followed the John Muir Way, as it took that right-hand turn and headed east through Harestanes Wood, keeping parallel with the B-road.
Aberlady & Luffness
Aberlady Parish Church
The footpath remained slightly but definitely separated from the road all the way to the edge of Aberlady, where it dumped us onto the regular pedestrian pavement. About 300 m of that then brought us to Aberlady Parish Church.
As is often the case with village churches, while records of a church date back to 1452, the one we see standing today is not really that one. It was largely rebuilt in 1773 and then again in 1887, this time designed by William Young for the 10th Earl of Wemyss. In both cases, the original tower remained intact.
Louping-on Stane
Directly outside the church’s gate, we found this:
Actually, we knew what it was right away. Both the Lemming and I would probably have called it a mounting block, though the Scots might prefer ‘louping-on stane.’
In either case, it was there to aid church-going Victorian ladies in mounting or dismounting the horse that they, being proper and respectable, were riding side-saddle. This particular block is one of the best examples of its kind in Scotland and dates to around 1880, when the church boundary walls were rebuilt.
As horseless and vaguely disreputable menfolk, the mounting block was of no use to us. Noting it only as a curiosity, we continued along the A198 (now Aberlady High Street), heading further into the village.
Red Row
Along the way, we passed several rather lovely examples of what we thought might be alms-houses.
We were wrong in that, for these were estate cottages, built circa 1840 for Francis Wemyss Charteris Douglas, 8th Earl of Wemyss (1772-1853) to house workers on his estates. As you can see, they were fashioned from attractive red sandstone:
Wagon Lodge
On the opposite side of the High Street was an even more striking example of such cottages. In the form of a building now known as Wagon Lodge. Also built circa 1840 as a much shorter terrace, its sandstone and its arched windows and pend all make for a winning appearance.
Although also built as estate housing, by 1900, it was serving a new purpose.
The ‘guy’ in question was George W Guy, and he ran the Wagon Inn on these premises from 1900 until 1935, when he sold it on into new ownership. It then continued as a pub until 1978, when another new owner shifted its focus slightly, turning it into a restaurant and bar. That lasted until 1994, when it closed down and was turned back into residential use. At least one of its three units is now holiday accommodation.
Mercat Cross
About 50 m further on from Wagon Lodge, we encountered Aberlady’s rather sad-looking mercat cross. Not that it actually had a cross, it was more of a ‘mercat stick’.
Most online sources seem to think it’s 18th-century, but none ever seem to be more specific, so I think they’re just quoting each other. When the Ordnance Survey maps were first compiled in 1853-4, their Name Book was much less confident about its date:
‘A stone pillar about 7 feet in height erected upon a pedestal about 4 feet high, of its origin nothing is known in the locality, except it had been erected as a market cross. No markets or fairs have been held in the village since the memory of man.’
That Aberlady had a mercat cross at all, speaks to its prior importance, implying burgh status and the right to hold a market. And it was named as the ‘port of Haddington’ – Haddington being the county town of East Lothian – in a 1633 charter for that town, which confirmed an earlier one from 1149.
The New Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1845, was surprisingly dismissive of this:
‘This harbour or anchorage ground is, in virtue of a royal grant, confirmed by the Scottish Parliament in 1633, the Port of Haddington; but the grant is unproductive, as the trade is trifling.’
What makes this particularly harsh is that, in 1845, the burgh had just sold its right of anchorage to the Earl of Wemyss on the understanding that the reason that its trade was dwindling to nothing was that the NBR was under construction and its trains were about to make their harbour largely obsolete.
Booze versus Botany
Returning our attention to the present year, Aberlady was aware that its mercat cross looked a bit pitiful and had tried to brighten it up with floral planters, which were in situ in January 2024.
But then three drunken teenagers thought it would be absolutely hilarious to relocate the soil onto nearby cars and now the planters have all been removed. One of the teenagers later shamefacedly admitted to the act and was apparently deeply apologetic.
Aberlady Bay
Not being cars, the Lemming and I avoided a vicious flowerpotting as we followed the A198 round two corners. This brought us to the shores of Aberlady Bay, the embayment that had given Aberlady its port status despite never actually having a proper harbour.
In 1952, Aberlady Bay became the UK’s first Local Nature Reserve. This was a designation with which I was unfamiliar, although it turns out there are now thousands of them. Having said that, the actual meaning of LNR designation seems a bit woolly and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the environment is protected, just that the council recognises that it probably should be.
We sat and rested and looked at it for a moment, taking in the sights and sounds of nature.
Luffness Friary
When we’d rested as long as we dared, we set off up the bay alongside the A198.
We soon passed a cottage whose sign proclaimed it Quarry House and were blissfully unaware that hidden in the trees behind it were the ruins of a Carmelite friary. This was founded on a donation of land by Sir David de Lindsay (d. 1279), a knight and supporter of the Comyns who had risen to act as regent to Alexander III (1241-1286) and to hold the office of Lord Chamberlain of Scotland (essentially the kingdom’s treasurer).
Sir David went on the Ninth Crusade under the command of Louis IX of France (1214-1270) and died in Egypt. On his deathbed, he promised to donate land for a religious house in return for his remains being repatriated.
The friary was eventually built in 1293 only to be occupied in 1311 by Edward I of England (1239-1307) and sacked by the Earl of Lincoln in 1547 (whom, you may recall, was commanding the Duke of Somerset’s fleet during the Rough Wooing).
Peffer Burn
Aberlady Bay was the estuary for Peffer Burn and, when the A198 reached this, it turned right and headed upstream.
A footbridge crossed the burn, leading to footpaths across Luffness Links and past Marl Loch to the Yellow Mires and then around Gullane Point. But none of these footpaths were the John Muir Way which, for the moment, was choosing A-road pavement over footpath mud.
With a lingering look at the footbridge, we followed the A-road inland, past the gate of Luffness House.
Luffness House
The Luffness Estate was obviously the land from which the friary was carved. This passed by marriage from the Gospatric Earls of Lothian to the Lindsays in the 12th century and the latter built themselves a castle in the 13th. By 1296, the castle had become occupied by the Bickertons instead and then passed to Sir Patrick Hepburn of Waughton in 1464.
The castle was sacked in 1548 during the Rough Wooing and an artillery fort constructed the following year under the direction of the French marshal Paul de La Barthe de Thermes (1482–1562), who was keen to disrupt English supplies. The fort was then dismantled in 1551.
The Hepburns built a new tower house in 1584, partly covering the old fort. In 1648, they were followed by the Durhams, then the Duffs in 1704 and finally the Hope Earls of Hopetoun in 1739, who remodelled it several times in the 19th century, eventually making it as it is now. It remains the home of the Hopes.
Luffness Mill
About a quarter mile onwards from Luffness House, the A198 was met by the tautologically-named Avenue Road, which led to the estate farm, Luffness Mains.
With our backs to the farm, we now headed north past the gateposts of Luffness Mill House – a saw mill had once been powered by the waters of Peffer Burn, which stream we now crossed. Luffness Mill Cottages, perched beside the bridge, silently watched us pass.
Luffness New Golf Club
Pretty much everything ahead of us now looked like golf course, a type of terrain I irrationally detest. This belonged to the Luffness New Golf Club, which was established in 1894 (for a particular value of ‘new’) and is not to be confused with the Luffness Old Golf Club (1867-1898) that preceded, and then overlapped with it.
Now, when you see that there was an old club and new club and that they both briefly existed together, you just know there’s going to be a tale. Annoyingly, the details here appear to be contradictory and confusing.
The old club straddled the both the Luffness and Gullane estates and the owner of the former, Henry Walter Hope (1839-1913) was ‘not at present on good terms with members of Luffness Golf Club,’ according to the Edinburgh Evening News in 1893. He urged them not to pay rent to the Gullane Estate and built the new club golf course, but only some of the old club moved to the new one.
I have no doubt there was an attendant ton of interminable pettiness and politics, as can poison any club if it’s allowed to.
Peffer Bank Wood
We took a right-hand turn off the A-road and right past the Luffness New’s clubhouse. We then passed Peffer Bank Wood to our right and came to a junction in the path, where we could either turn left and follow the John Muir Way waymarks to Gullane, or we could go right to absolutely nothing in a field.
Luffness Platform
While the right-hand path goes nowhere now, that was not always the case. It was, in fact, the path to Luffness Platform, an unstaffed halt on the 1898 Aberlady, Gullane and North Berwick Railway (AG&NBR), which had existed purely to serve golfers attending the Luffness New course. The platform’s existence was a little ironic, as Henry Walter Hope had opposed the building of the AG&NBR, but its construction was his condition for acquiescing.
Unfortunately, the halt was also doomed, because motor cars became a thing. The thing about Luffness New’s golfers is that they were wealthy and so, as the 20th century dawned, they all bought newfangled cars. Now, basically unused, the platform closed in 1931.
The rest of the AG&NBR didn’t actually fare much better. A financial failure, it never made it to North Berwick and closed its other two stations (Aberlady and Gullane) to passengers in 1932. It then limped on as a goods line, mainly transporting sugar beets, until 1964 when Beeching axed it.
Gullane & Dirleton
Saltcoats Castle
Obviously, we never saw the halt as it is no longer there. We did see the course of the railway, sort of, but looked right over and past it at other things demanding our attention. One was North Berwick Law, looming on the horizon as a limpet-like landmark the AG&NBR’s builders would never reach. The other was Saltcoats Castle.
Built in 1590 by Patrick Livingston of Saltcoats, the castle remained in Livingston hands until the early 18th-century when it passed to Margaret Menzies, daughter of a Livingston heiress. She married twice, passing the castle first into the control of John Hamilton of Pencaitland in 1709 and then, after his death, to William Carmichael of Skirling, son of the Earl of Hyndford. She then outlived him too, eventually dying in 1790 at the age of about a hundred.
The castle sat empty thereafter and, from 1810 onwards, began to be quarried by locals as a source of worked stone.
Gullane
The John Muir Way very briefly joined the AG&NBR alignment at Saltcoats before spitting us out onto Saltcoats Road, which then carried us into Gullane, where we re-joined the A198.
Today, Gullane is both a commuter dormitory town serving Edinburgh and a retirement town, but it is also inextricably linked with golf. In addition to having the Luffness New Golf Club on its doorstep, it is also home to Gullane Golf Club (est. 1882) and, more prestigiously, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (est. 1744), which owns Muirfield golf links. Muirfield is one of ten golf courses that currently host The Open Championship in rotation.
Main Street
In Gullane, we bought drinks and snacks from a shop and rested briefly on a bench. For various different reasons, we were both finding the day harder-going than expected.
When we eventually felt ready to continue, we headed east along Main Street (as the A198 was now called) and out beyond the eastern edge of the town, where we were pleased to discover a proper pedestrian pavement and cycle path running beside the A-road.
Archerfield Estate
About half a mile east of Gullane, we reached the West Lodge of the Archerfield Estate. Here, we were directed by waymarks through a gate onto a Footpath of Innumerable Puddles that passed wetly through a wooded area. This soon broke out of the trees, however, and deposited us onto a new-looking surfaced road that served both the 18th-century Archerfield House and the 21st-century Archerfield Village housing development.
Archerfield House
Archerfield House was built in the late 17th century as the new seat of John Nisbet, Lord Dirleton (c. 1609–1687) rather than repair the civil war-damaged Dirleton Castle. The Nisbets later had it rebuilt by architect John Douglas (c. 1709-1778) circa 1745, and altered again by Robert Adam in 1790. Later abandoned, the house was renovated in the early 1970s by Air Cdre Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton (1903-1973), who was incidentally the first man to fly over Mount Everest. Today, the house is an exclusive hotel.
The Nisbets of Dirleton used arms based on the customary three black boars’ heads on silver of Nisbet, but had racked up a whole heap of differences including a red chevron, cinquefoils on the chevron, and a thistle. Whereas the arms of Douglas-Hamilton simply quarter the cinquefoils and lymphad of Hamilton, with the crowned heart and mullets (stars) of Douglas.
Dirleton Village Green
We never reached Archerfield House, turning off its pristine roadway onto a much older, rougher and narrower estate road, which conveyed us eastwards to Dirleton Village Green.
Dirleton Castle
Dirleton Castle was built circa 1240 by John de Vaux, a former steward in the household of Alexander II’s queen, Marie de Coucy. It was captured by the English in 1298 and badly damaged, passing through several hands, but was repaired by John Haliburton in 1356. It passed to the Ruthvens in 1505, but they forfeited it as traitors just under a century later. It then lay theoretically empty, although Oliver Cromwell felt the need to besiege it in 1650 to deal with a band of moss-troopers (cross-border brigands) squatting in it.
In 1663, the judge John Nisbet purchased the estate but realised he could build a much more comfortable house instead of rebuilding the castle, and so did exactly that. In 1923, his descendants passed the ruins and gardens to the state. Today, they are maintained by Historic Environment Scotland.
Manse Road
The Lemming and I turned north, and headed up Manse Road past Dirleton Kirk (the manse itself, built in 1633, was behind us, facing onto the green). The road passed several cottages and then broke out into open fields, heading towards and then past the farmstead of Dirleton New Mains.
Immediately northeast of the farm was the site of the WW2 Dirleton Radar Station, a Ground Control of Interception (GCI) station operating from 1941 until 1946 and then used for training until 1954. Although long-disused and converted into a dwelling, the station is remarkable as one of very few such buildings that have survived.
When we drew level with Dirleton New Mains, the road turned hard right to access it but we kept heading north along a farm track. This eventually turned northeast when it came to the trees backing Archerfield Village, before finally breaking through them at the edge of Yellowcraig Plantation, to emerge onto the low dunes backing Yellowcraig Beach.
Fidra
Fidra Lighthouse was built in 1885, designed by David Alan Stevenson (1854-1938) – the son of David Stevenson – and automated in 1970 as the first unmanned Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) lighthouse.
In 2013, it was transferred from the NLB to Forth Ports Limited and, at the time of writing in late 2024, they are planning to convert it to solar power (with battery storage, obviously, else a ‘solar-powered lighthouse’ would be oxymoronic).
Although the island of Fidra is now uninhabited, it was not always so. It houses the ruins of a chapel, built after William de Vaux gifted the island to the monks of Dryburgh Abbey in 1220, that gift being one of the reasons that his son John needed to build Dirleton Castle. Prior to that, they had had a castle on the island – Castle Tarbet – built by a previous John de Vaux, who was William’s father.
North Berwick
Invereil House
Avoiding a couple of people who seemed to be filming some sort of music video, we followed the John Muir Way waymarks as they led along the top of Yellowcraig Plantation and then past the late Victorian mansion, Invereil House.
This splendid structure was commissioned in the 1890s by wealthy amateur golf champion John Laidlay (1860-1940) and built in the eastern end of Linkhouse Wood, overlooking the eighth fairway of North Berwick Golf Club (est. 1832).
It was Laidlay who invented the most popular golf grip, the Vardon Grip, which is used by about 90% of modern golfers. However, as you can probably tell from its name, someone else managed to popularise it with better publicity. That someone else was professional golfer Henry Vardon (1870-1937).
Lamb
The sun was just about to set as we passed Invereil House and found ourselves joining the end of Abbotsford Road, from which we got a view of another small island, namely Lamb.
Historically part of the barony of Dirleton, Lamb was bought by self-professed psychic and celebrity Uri Geller, who apparently believes that Ancient Egyptian treasure is buried there. Because, I guess, why not?
Now that we’d joined this road, we were on the outskirts of Giza North Berwick and so were almost there. We were moving pretty slowly though, as prophesied by The Bangles:
North Berwick Station
Aware that daylight was just about to dwindle as much as had our energy, we elected to abandon the John Muir Way as it threaded its way through North Berwick’s backstreets. Instead, we returned to the A198, now Dirleton Avenue, and a direct if unexciting route to North Berwick station (opened in 1850 by the NBR).
As it turned out, the station – or rather ScotRail – did have one last burst of excitement in store for us. We had checked train times previously, and re-checked them during the day, but now that we were at the station, our train was definitely not listed on the display.
Some frantic investigation revealed that emergency timetables were being implemented at short notice due to an industrial dispute between ScotRail and their drivers. The upshot of this was that many of the trains were cancelled and we had some unexpected time to kill before we could leave North Berwick.
Killing Time
We randomly accosted a startled teenage lad and asked him where the nearest pub was. We then set off on a mission to the High Street. It was a pretty successful mission, if one measures success in the size of a portion of fish and chips (devoured en route to the pub) and/or the acquisition of a pint.
We Return!
A couple of hours later, we were back at the station to catch a train that really was running, this time we mean it, cross our hearts and hope to die, honest!
The train whisked us back to Edinburgh at a speed that just made a mockery of our progress throughout the day.
The next morning, trains permitting, we would be back, ready to continue on to Dunbar. But tomorrow, as they say, would be a whole other day…
This time: 26½ miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,588 miles
Wow, quite a distance and what an interesting and well-researched blog. Took me several days to read it. Sounds like a great walk, and with a well deserved fish and chips + pint at the end.
Thanks Ruth! And thanks also for persevering to the end of it! My tendency to write an entire Victorian three volume novel’s worth of text is off-putting to many, I know, but I tend to find absolutely everything interesting – Even golf courses sometimes, though I like them about as much as you like cows – and I want to note it all down.
Your own blog is, of course, a perfect example of how to do it properly, if you want to make it both digestible and enjoyable to read.