East Lothian Coast and Craigmillar Castle

North Berwick

Gullane Bay

Last weekend Jess, Andrew, Catlin, and I all took a train to North Berwick which is located in East Lothian district. North Berwick is a coastal town to the east of Edinburgh. It was an overcast day which was good weather to me since it had been raining the past couple of days. We planned to do a 6 mile hike along the coast. The hike would go from the North Berwick to the town of Gullane. The hike started off in a bay in North Berwick, with a golf course running next to us for the first two miles a trail. Just off shore were a couple of islands which also went along with the first two miles of the trail. I really enjoyed the first part of the walk, watching people play golf and the Scottish coast next to us as well.  We decided to eat our packed lunch on a rock that over looked the sea and had one of the islands in background. Sitting there I could really understand why people enjoyed Scotland's nature. For the terrain to be so pleasant in such harsh conditions is really amazing. The second part of our hike was still along the coast but the trail was over small hills with knee high grass growing on it. In the fields of grass were also bushes with orange berries growing on them which made for a wonderful background. The end of our hike ended in the town of Gullane on the Gullane bay. Gullane bay was was wedged in between the town and the grassy hills. The coastal town of  Gullane, which had cobble stone streets and many stone building overlooking the bay, reminded me of a quit get away house. East Lothian coast has been one of my favorite places here in Scotland to see because of the rugged and scenic coast.

Craigmillar Castle is located 3 miles south east of Edinburgh. Ricardo, Jess, Andrew and I all decided go and see it. The castle is still mainly in tact which was cool because a lot of the castles in Scotland are ruins now. We learned that the reason Scotland has many castles (over 2700) is because of the different clans trying to protect there territory. Anyways, the castle is most famous for because Mary Queen of Scots stayed in the castle for awhile to escape some of the madness that she was going through back in Holyrood Palace. The castle was pretty massive, having three floors and a couple rooms which were underground. You were able to see all the rooms, including the cellar, prison, bedrooms, dinning rooms, and go on top of the roof. Since it was a pretty nice day (it was sunny for the afternoon. but it had also rained three times that day as well) there were great views of Edinburgh and the surrounding  countryside. I could see all the way to North Berwick where we had traveled the other day, all of Holyrood Park, and the entire coast which was east of Edinburgh. I really enjoyed visiting Craigmillar Castle because of its medieval look, ancient but still intact rooms, and the amazing view of Edinburgh.