Sand, sea and history at Lunan Bay

Driving towards Lunan Bay on the Angus coast, there are glimpses of the beach stretching out from Boddin Point to Lang Craig. But this doesn’t give you the real sense of scale.

This only happens once you have parked the car and are making your way up over the dunes. Distracted by the sand already pouring into your shoes, you hit the crest of the hill unprepared for the two-mile smile which suddenly glows up at you.

Despite being named one of Scotland’s best beaches, there are so few people around that you feel a bit like an intruder. But once you step onto the beach itself, this feeling changes and suddenly you are a part of the scene, one of the pieces moving inside the painting.

If you had the magical ability to move through time, you could tug yourself back a thousand years and watch Viking ships coming ashore here before the marauders are beaten back by King Malcolm II’s army.

Move a hundred years or so into the future and you could see the slow and steady construction of Red Castle, which today resembles a giant stone Tetris piece.

Like any beach, Lunan Bay invites exploration. Stand still and almost breathless until the seabirds forget you are there and resume their shallow water puttering and their sudden, mad squabbles over scraps of food.

Spend time walking with long, slow strides, casting your eye over the barrage of pretty pebbles in search of the agates and gemstones that often reveal themselves here.

As the sun creeps out once again from behind a bank of cloud, leave the Red Castle behind and head north towards the crumpled cliffs that wear green hats and crusty patches of yellow over their faces.

As you draw closer your heart begins to race as the word “cave!” bellows in your mind.

Yes, you are a pirate, come to seek the treasure you have heard was hidden here hundreds of years ago.

Moving into the shadows you study every inch, imagining how you would tuck yourself in during a storm and whether the tide would reach the tiny ledge in the very darkest corner.

By the time you head back there will be so much sand in your shoes there is no point in fighting it. Instead, climb around the dunes and watch the wind carve grandiose shapes from the sand, one grain at a time.

Finally it’s time to go. You have only be gone a few short hours, but it feels like days. Does it get any better than that?

A seal-less visit to Tentsmuir Point

Do you ever have adventures that at the time seem like a terrible punishment but somehow, days or weeks later, your mind romanticizes your memories and causes you to smile and sigh while looking through your photographs?

I know with certainty that my beloved will mock me, but suddenly I’m feeling all dreamy about Tentsmuir Nature Reserve. Of course, he is right to mock me. After all, all the material we had read before visiting Tentsmuir Point had waxed lyrical about the Tay estuary’s “year-round” seal population.

We walked and walked, taking the forest path and entertaining ourselves with banter of outlandish fictions about evil happenings in the woods, before launching into a contest to see who could find the biggest pine cone (I won).

Finally we turned and saw the sign that signalled we would soon be emerging onto the beach. The information board advised us to be aware of the possibility of Highland Cows grazing near the dunes (we didn’t see any).

Also, to illustrate a message about how dog poo poses disease risks for local wildlife, the sign boasts a charming cartoon of a squirrel being sick into a paper bag.

We crested a small dune and stepped onto the beach. And what a beach it was. It was vast and almost vacant, the beige sand stretching out to a blue-grey skyline of high cloud. The view was like a film that had been leached of colour, an eerie apocalyptic scene that made me think of The Waste Land:

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

Of course, this place is not lifeless. The Tay is a valuable habitat for waterfowl, including the UK’s largest winter gathering of eider ducks. But this was not winter, and we were not here to see ducks. We wanted to see seals.

On and on we walked, our shoes sinking into the soft sand while the grass danced on the dunes beside us. We thought that after the next curve…the next one…that perhaps we would see the tell-tale black tube of a seal on the beach. But there was nothing.

Eventually we gave up, turned inland again and past the long rows of 1941 anti-tank blocks, which stand like massive forgotten dominos along what used to be the high tide line (the sands here are always moving, carved out by the sea on the south side and dumped on the ever growing north beaches).

Perhaps it is because my work is becoming busier as we head towards the festival season. Everyday when I walk to the office I can feel Edinburgh shifting gears, preparing. Whatever the reason, now when I look at these photos I find myself longing for the wild unbroken vista of beach, sea and sky. The landscape stretches in a way that I cannot.

In conclusion, I shall let Tentsmuir Point be a lesson in expectation. If you rely too heavily on one idea, you risk not being able to fully appreciate the beautiful alternatives that await you should that initial desire not unfold.

Thanks for visiting this wee patch of Scotland-loving Internet. This blog is an expression of my relentless curiosity and love for this country, and I am so grateful for all the kindness and enthusiasm my readers have shown to me.

Another thank you to those who have been joining in my tea giveaway. I love reading all your comments and stories about the part tea plays in your lives. The door for entries will remain open until Saturday and I’ll draw names on Sunday. Please visit the May 23 Scottish Breakfast Tea post to enter.

Escape to Gullane, part two (The Bleached Rocks)

The bleached rocks of Gullane Beach can’t be said to loom or even intrigue from a distance. It is only when you get up close that the textures and layers of these great droopy monsters begin to overwhelm.

I am a panicky climber, prone to long pauses in which my mind attempts to tell my foot to move while my body pays no attention. So it was with slow, lumbering movements that I made my way at high tide to where the bulbous mass of stones made me think of melting elephant bones.

This is geology being a bit of a show off. There is something about all these frozen undulations that should be ugly, but isn’t. The texture of the stone is rough like pumice, while the colourful lower layers are brittle and easily chipped.

It doesn’t matter that I know countless people have seen these rocks before me, it still feels like a discovery, and I spend a long time scuttling around in their shadows, leaning in and out with my camera, filling the lens with curves and lines, dark and light. I want to see them on a bright blue sky morning, and again in the late afternoon when there is a storm gathering out on the water.

For photography lovers, there is no shortage of inspiration in this one small place. Every angle reveals something different. The sky and sea play their parts, always changing the light and making you think that the thing you have already looked at three times is new again.

With so many other beautiful beaches in East Lothian, these stones help Gullane Beach to stand out. I can’t wait to go again.

Escape to Gullane (part one)

The more time I spend in East Lothian, the more I love it. There is a gentle grandeur to that part of the east coast that keeps drawing me back, and no matter where I start, I like nothing more than to end up in Gullane.

For many people, Gullane conjures up images of rolling green golf courses flung inward from the edges of the sea and dotted heavily at the borders with expansive villas. Like St. Andrews, this is a place golfers take seriously, as the old Muirfield Course is home to the rather posh sounding Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

I have never golfed and I don’t know if I ever will. Yet I take incredible enjoyment in this quaint old village, for it holds a number of well placed pleasures. The things I love are tucked in close around the long and simple main street, starting with the dilapidated ruins of the old church of St. Andrew.

The church lies across the street from a rather nice deli (ask about the treacle oat biscuits). A mop of dead vines hunches over the broken walls and a wooden door is propped open, an ongoing invitation to the parishioners who abandoned this building hundreds of years ago when the newer Dirleton Kirk was opened. The rusted lock is draped with cobwebs, the cover to the keyhole barely parted as if in the hope its companion key might still exist somewhere.

The road that runs past the church away from the high street is the one that leads to the shore of a long, beautiful beach. Oh, how easy it would be to walk to the beach, if only the magnetic tug of exquisite cake wasn’t hauling us back down the pavement and into Falko, a bustling German bakery and coffeehouse. If we just could tear ourselves away from the promise of three-layered torte or meringues that hover like clouds behind the glass display case, then we could go to the beach.

There is nothing to be done. We should eat.

And? Which did you choose?

Now we can go to the beach, following the trail that is lined with sea berries, which are rust red on one side and bleached white on the other. We can dodge the tide and look up at the dunes, where the wind pushes at the stalks of grass and makes them bend like an army of old men that refuse to fall.

The waves chop placidly at the shore, but this doesn’t stop one suspicious dog from chasing them up and down, biting down on the white furls just as they break and disappear, thwarting him yet again. We count seashells and see the fanned remains of seabird wings, lost to some unknown tragedy. A little further down the beach a stick rises up from the shoreline like a frozen cobra.

There is something else on this beach that I want to show you, but I loved the place so much I was unable to scale down the photos enough to include them here. Instead I will post them tomorrow, so they can stand alone in all their glory.

All that remains is to offer a big friendly greeting to any newcomers to this blog. I’ve rarely been so delightfully shocked in all my life.

Postcards from Sheigra

This is where the road ends, past Kinlochbervie and the tiny villages of Oldshoremore and Blairmore. You can ease your car over the rough single track, open the gate and drive over the shorn green fields to park within sight of the sea, the sandy beach dropping down to the water like a wide, inviting plank.

Not far back down the road is the start of the four-mile trail that would have led you to the spectacular Sandwood Bay, but if it is already early evening and the weather is promising to turn, this is the time to smile and stop for a little wild camping.

The wind pelts you as you try to spot the oyster catcher that is skulking the shoreline. The gusts drive into your ears as every third wave forgets to be tender and crashes up the beach. Everything about the place is divided between fragile beauty and raw, energetic destruction. A tower of sand stands like an ancient monument in miniature, as grain-by-grain the nearby stream pulls it down. Near the water, the tumbled beauty of a pile of seaweed is the result of a particularly violent surge from the sea.

It is all so perfect. You share your campsite with the sheep, who look like Kindergarten constructions of cotton balls and toothpicks. In cartoon fashion they run up and down the hills and head butt each other playfully before taking off again.

The chill makes the sky ache with blue, and the tender wisps of cloud that tear around the frame of the beach look like something a fairground candy maker would create. But you have been facing the sea for so long, you have forgotten that the horizon exists in every direction. You turn around…

…to see the storm bulging like an angry genie, its dark belly hunkered beneath mountainous shoulders, dwarfing the village beneath it.

Inside this monster is the magic that will stretch time, making the night last longer than any night before or since. It is the kind of storm that will wash everything clean, scrub the last remnants of life from old scattered shells.

But there are a few minutes yet. You turn your back on the aproaching gale and gaze out at the sun-drenched sea, making believe that summer really could last forever.