East Lothian
The sunniest corner of Scotland — golden beaches, a gannet rock and mighty castles.
The drier, sunnier corner of Scotland, and one of the easiest good days out from Edinburgh — barely half an hour east of the city and a different world of golden beaches, big skies and mighty castles. This is a coast of golf links and gannet colonies, of a volcanic hill you can climb before lunch and a fortress that has stared down the North Sea for six hundred years. It catches far more sun and far less rain than the west, which makes it a brilliant fair-weather bolt-hole — and it’s compact enough to see the best of in a long weekend.
North Berwick & the coast
North Berwick is the perfect East Lothian seaside town — a genteel little resort with a working harbour, two sandy bays right in the middle of town, and the excellent Scottish Seabird Centre on the point. Behind it rises North Berwick Law, the cone of an extinct volcano crowned with a whalebone arch; it’s a short, sharp climb and the 360-degree view from the top — the Forth, the Bass, the Lammermuirs, Edinburgh — is one of the best in the Lothians. Down at sea level, the town’s beaches and coast walk are made for a slow afternoon.
Offshore lies the great white dome of the Bass Rock — home to the largest colony of Northern gannets in the world, well over a hundred thousand birds, so many that the rock turns white and the air above it swirls with them. Boat trips run out to it from the harbour in season, and it’s a genuinely unforgettable sight; the naturalist Sir David Attenborough has called it one of the wildlife wonders of the world.
Tantallon & Dirleton
A couple of miles east of the town, Tantallon Castle is the one that stops you in your tracks — a huge curtain wall of red stone thrown across a headland, sea on three sides, staring straight out at the Bass Rock. The last great fortress-castle built in Scotland, and a stronghold of the “Red” Douglases, it’s a definite visit for the setting alone.
West along the coast, Dirleton is regularly called the prettiest village in Scotland — a green ringed by cottages, with a romantic medieval castle at its heart whose gardens hold one of the longest herbaceous borders in the world. From here the coast runs out past Yellowcraig to the little island of Fidra, the wooded isle said to have given Robert Louis Stevenson the shape of Treasure Island.
Dunbar & John Muir country
At the southern end of the county, Dunbar is a tougher, saltier town with a great story — the birthplace of John Muir, the Scot who founded America’s national parks, now remembered by the long-distance John Muir Way that starts here. Its red castle ruin clings to the rocks above the harbour, once held for weeks against the English by the formidable “Black Agnes,” Countess of Dunbar, who is said to have dusted the battlements where the cannonballs struck to show how little she cared.
Just west of the town, the sands of Belhaven Bay and the wide dunes and pinewoods of Tyninghame and the John Muir Country Park make one of the loveliest stretches of the whole East Lothian shore — big empty beaches, an estuary full of birds, and the famous “Bridge to Nowhere” at Belhaven that stands marooned in the sea at high tide. A perfect place to end a day, ideally with a Forth sunset behind you.
Why East Lothian?
Because it’s the easiest great day out from Edinburgh — golden beaches, a climbable volcano, the world’s biggest gannet colony and a run of mighty castles, all in the sunniest, driest corner of the country. Perfect for a fair-weather escape, a family beach day or a golf-and-history weekend, and small enough to see the best of in a couple of days. Close, uncrowded and full of quality — well worth it.
Explore more: Lochs · Castles · Clans · Standing Stones · Kirks & Abbeys.