East is East, West is Wet

A couple of weeks back, after a short jaunt up Ben A’an and coffee in the  Harbour Cafe on the shores of Loch Vennacher with friends from the walking club, we headed over to the east coast in our beloved (but ever-thirsty) Bongo for a change, to try to get away from the horrible, dreich weather we’d been having for weeks, day in, day out. We had originally planned to do some scrambling in Glen Coe, but the prospect of doing so in high winds, rain and driving snow above 800m metres was uninviting. So east it was.

Driving down past Edinburgh at a steady 55, heading towards East Lothian, the weather brightened and as we hit the coast the sun came out. The wet west was behind us.

Soon we were in North Berwick, where we went for a short stroll along the beach, a shorter unsuccessful stroll to find a decent pub and a more successful dash for fish suppers (strolling for a fish supper is just about impossible).

(“Salt and sauce?” was the question, “Salt and vinegar,” the reply, the differences between east and west becoming increasingly obvious, not only in the prevailing weather but in the vital world of condiment choice too.)

Dinner sorted, we headed along the sea front to a cracking spot above North Berwick where we sat in the back of the van, opened the sliding door to get the most of the warmth of the sun, and got tucked in.

The next morning, after an evenful night outside of Dunbar during which we were pestered by some youths who thought giving our van a good old shake would be a laugh (John Muir, a native of the town, wouldn’t have been impressed), we  headed south to Cockburnspath, a small village at the end of the Southern Upland Way. En route we passed fields being watered by sprinklers. In the west of Scotland, we’d had rain every day for three weeks – surely it couldn’t have been that dry over here?

Before this long distance path heads west, across country to Port Patrick in  Ayrshire, it takes a little dog leg east towards Cove, a little hamlet by the cliffs.  It was a lovely day, windy and dry, so we decided to go for a walk in this direction along a section of the Southern Upland Way, passed fields where the rich dry earth was cracked and open, and then cut off towards Siccar Point, a geologically world-famous site, where the geologist James Hutton found an excellent example of an ‘unconformity’ which provided evidence for his theories about the age of the earth.

Hutton’s Unconformity, Siccar Point

On the way back from Siccar Point, the big box of the Torness power station dominated the landscape, like an ugly robotic head. It didn’t fit. It looked alien, like someone had dropped it in from space with a galactic crane.

Before heading home back west, we made a short trip south again to the little harbour village of St Abbs to watch the divers loading their boats with all their diving gear. The village has a feel to it more akin to Cornwall than Scotland, and the beautiful weather contributed to our feeling of being in another country. East is east, west is west, never the twain shall meet.

Jacqueline and I discussed whether we could live on the east coast of Scotland. Plus points? The weather! The coast! The lack of midges! Negative points? It’s too far from the mountains!