It was a glorious morning and I rose early, slipped into my sturdy walking boots and hiked the 3 miles to the impressive ruins of Tantallon Castle. I was drawn like a magnet to this huge fortification that towers majestically above the sea and couldn’t help recalling some of the stirring words from Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion.
Continue reading Historical Tantallon
Author: Winston C Irvine
Blasts From the Past
The slack dunes crumble under the wheels of the 1927 Galloway car as I head back to the Myreton Motor Museum at Aberlady; away from the incessant calls of the herring gulls, gannets, puffins and fulmars and the long white tails of parnassus grass that wave forlornly in the sea-cool breeze.
Life and Work at Sancta Maria Abbey
There could scarcely have been a more desolate site to build a monastery; smack bang on East Lothian’s bleak and barren Lammermuir Hills, a short distance above the picturesque village of Garvald.
The Penicuik to Bonnyrigg Walkway
Taking the walk from south to north, it runs from Valleyfield Monument to Loanhead and back to Rosslyn, around 7 miles. For much of the walk you are following a disused railway track, providing good walking conditions on the whole. The points described can be followed on the map. If you have access to more than one vehicle, you can leave one at Rosslyn for when you finish. Otherwise, there are buses through Penicuik and Bonnyrigg. Map is O.S. Sheet 66.
Hedgehog Haven
Coming home one night I saw the outline of a hedgehog in the middle of the road. For a brief moment, the animal froze like a living statue; I acted instinctively and slammed on the brakes; the animal gave me a considered look, wheezed over to the verge on the other side and vanished into the hedgerow.
Airship Memories
East Lothian skies are fairly peaceful, except for the occasional scream of a low flying jet or the steady throb of a light aircraft puttering out of Turnhouse, on the other side of the capital city. However, at one time the skies were heavy with aircraft noise and before that, with great airships rising from East Fortune airfield.