I took this shot whilst waiting for the train. The obelisk on the left is the Political Martyr's monument which stands on Old Calton cemetery. Apparently this cemetery is old and beautiful but to be honest I was more interested in the castle-like building on the right of it. Apparently it is the old city jail (Thanks Charles Henderson!).
So off we went to North Berwick. Marjolein spotted this street sign and pretended to be a Beatle ;-)
After a cup of tea and cake we moved on towards the beach. We crossed the North Berwick golf course...
... and found the North Berwick beach.
Quite a nice beach I have to say. Very open, no dunes, clean, just like it was in Australia. I imagine a summer's swim here would be very nice indeed!
You can see the island of Craigleith from the beach. Two quick notes on the island:
- It's rabbit population was wiped out by Myxomatosis in the 1950's. However, someone mysteriously put out a new population in 2008!
- The island houses a few different bird species during their breeding season, one of them being a puffin colony. Due to the arrival of a non-native plant which fills up the crevices and burrows the puffins breed in there is not much left of the puffin colony. Volunteers now try to rid the island of this plant during the winter, when the puffins aren't home and the puffin population seems to be increasing again. Hurrah! :-)
"Craigleith" view towards the old harbour.
"Bass rock" view towards the old harbour. The big rock that can be seen when looking in between the houses is the "Bass rock". It's an island that houses 10% of the world population of Gannet birds.
We started walking towards the old harbour along the beach. The beach is actually quite narrow here and we thought water was pretty close to the houses. Little did we know at the time... Please continue reading ;-)
The beach view backwards. I had the feeling the beach was getting smaller by the minute.
At the old harbour there is this row of coloured houses. Very nice.
Little historic buildings? Dunno about the right one but the left one is for sure! What I didn't know at the time is that I had run in to my high light of the day. More about it later.
The harbour is filled with small sailing boats.
So, back to the old historic building we saw before. This is it. I thought it was a shed at first but it used to be the porch to a small kirk (church - and in Dutch "kerk"). St Andrew's old kirk used to stand here when North Berwick was still very very small.
Very small indeed. North Berwick used to be a little pilgrim village. The old kirk was expanded over time. It is believed to have been preceded by a small wooden structure but no evidence of that has been found, contrary of what can be found here today: The remains of the walls that once were St Andrew's old kirk. During a severe storm in 1656 roughly half of the church collapsed in to the sea. The remains could not be repaired and the stones were used for building elsewhere.
This explains the various stages in the kirk's life. Starting with it's construction around the year 1100 until it's collapse in 1656. Please click on the picture to enlarge it for reading if you wish. The red and yellow walls are parts of which the remains can still be seen.
All that remains today is the foundation of the walls. The corner of the house most left occupies about a quarter of the space where the old kirk's tower would've been.
It's pretty clear where the other half of the kirk once was...
This is what Andrew's old kirk would have looked like when it was still all in one piece.
I found this a very interesting little site. So much history. It's just incredibly fascinating!
Then it was off to actually the main goal of our visit. The hill with the trees in the distance. It's called The North Berwick Law. But more later. Lunch first!
We walked in to the town.
This is actually the 3rd generation church in North Berwick. Later we'll see the ruins of the second generation church that was build to replace St Andrew's old kirk.
We had fish and chips in a cafe. It was OK but by far not as good as the one we had in the Doric yesterday.
When we left to set foot to the hill I was shocked to see how high the water had risen! It was now pounding the backs of the houses we had walked past just 2 hours before. Crazy!
So this is the North Berwick Law. A hill surrounded by flat countryside. Apart from the fact that it's just the one hill surrounded by flat countryside which makes it interesting enough for some folks (it's actually formed by volcanic activity a loooooong time ago), what had drawn us here were the following two things:
These trees. They are beech trees planted in 1707 to celebrate the signing of the Act of Union that brought Scotland and England together to form Great Britain. Very old trees indeed that have somehow survived in the barren conditions they were planted in.
The structure on top. The remains on top are that of a building constructed during the Napoleonic wars. The arch next to it used to be a whale jaw bone, it's now been replaced by a plastic replica because the jaw rotted away and became dangerous.
As can be seen by the above two photographs, by the time we got close to the hill it was getting dark and going up close may not have been a good idea so we passed.
On our way back in town we accidentally came across the second generation church that was build to replace the first which fell in to the sea. This is the Parish kirk.
Even more accidentally we stumbled upon a prize winning public toilet!
When we got back to the train station we were informed that the train was cancelled. All of them actually. A replacement bus service was driving though and we got front seats. There was free entertainment in the form of an early season's parade which probably held up the bus for a good 15 minutes. There were torch bearers and a pipe band.
Back in Edinburgh we had a wee drink before we hit an Indian resto.
The restaurant was fantastic. The food was great. They also had decorated the ceiling very well.
Marjolein remembered a session somewhere with a somewhat "famous" accordion player. Well, there he is. I personally didn't think it was any good really but Marjolein seemed to enjoy herself so that was good.
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