Wow, what an absolutely glorious day it is here in East Lothian.
The sort of day when you think
I just want to have a lovely walk along, a beautiful beach.
So today I thought we’d take a walk along three of the best
beaches here in East Lothian, just east of Edinburgh.
Fancy joining me.
Let's head along to Gullane first.
Well we’re here
in our first stop, Gullane. Gullane is a very famous
for its golf courses, but it's a very, pretty little town as well.
Worth a little walk through because there are some great pubs and restaurants here.
Even from the village green, you can see one of the golf courses
and the hills of East Lothian behind them
with those great bright yellow fields of rapeseed.
This is a famous gastropub, the Bonny Badger.
I just love that name.
But we're not really looking for pubs today.
We're looking for beaches.
So let's head to Gullane Beach.
Here we go.
Beach number one.
I can smell the sea already.
I get so excited when I am approaching a beach.
It’s much further down this path
than I thought.
Oh, gorgeous.
Well, here we are.
Gullane Beach.
This is the first beach that we're going to visit today,
and it's lovely and almost completely deserted.
So this way,
that's all the way out towards North Berwick
and the other way
back towards Edinburgh.
Of course,
this expanse of water is the Firth of Forth.
Right over there on the other side is Fife.
Well, it's actually early May, and the beach is
completely deserted apart from a few dog walkers.
Come the summer, however, Gullane Beach will be pretty packed with people.
It is in fact, one of the most popular beaches here in East Lothian.
Now, the next beach we're going to visit is a little bit more off the beaten track
and is often deserted even in the height of summer.
The next beach we're going to visit is Tyninghame beach.
Just before we get back into the car,
here's a view of the beach from a higher elevation.
Very pretty and still deserted.
Actually, you know, before we go to Tyninghame beach,
I actually fancy a coffee and I know just the place
for us to stop off on the way.
It's called Drift Café.
And it's unique because it's made out of shipping containers
and it's in such an amazing location right here on the Clifftops,
just outside of North Berwick.
Now, the views from here are absolutely stunning.
We can see so much.
Just take a look at this out there.
We've got Bass Rock that's famous breeding ground
for all sorts of seabirds, including gannets and puffins.
And just over there you can see Tantallon Castle.
And actually, that's a pretty nice beach just down there, isn't it?
Let's get some coffee then.
Take a look inside.
Genuinely is an amazing location here.
So I've got myself a cup of black coffee and a bacon roll for lunch,
which I shall scoff with that view
in front of me.
Now, that is absolutely
jam packed with bacon. Drift Café
bacon roll for lunch?
Yes. Well, I guess these beaches, either
side of the Drift Cafe are today's bonus beaches.
I hadn't intended to visit these,
but I'll just finish this coffee off and then we'll head to Tyninghame.
And that one is absolutely spectacular.
That coffee's pretty spectacular as well.
Can't beat a really strong cup of black Americano.
And a short
drive later, I'm here at the car park Tyninghame beach.
Now, I should have said before it costs me £2.50 to park a Gullane beach,
and it would have cost me £2.50 to park here at Tyninghame.
But just as I was driving in, another guy was driving out
and he waved his ticket at me and said, Do you want mine?
And of course I was more than happy to oblige.
There are some really kind people about. One of the
the reasons that Tyninghame beach rarely gets busy
is because even though it's car park is here, it's actually a 20 minute
walk from the car park through the woods to the beach itself.
And I guess that puts a lot of people off.
But believe me, it's worth that time in it takes to
trek through the woods.
Let's go and see Tyninghame beach,
Beautiful countryside
on the way to the beach.
You know this
20 minute walk through the woods certainly builds anticipation
for the beach itself.
Now then,
look at these huge concrete blocks.
I knew I was going to run into these.
Can you guess what they are?
These are actually anti-tank blocks
built way back at the start of World
War Two between 1940 and 1941,
when the UK feared invasion from Germany, they built these gigantic
concrete blocks just in case the enemy landed here
at Tyninghame.
Of course, they've never been demolished since then.
That's definitely another power of history thing, isn't it?
And through this final set of tank blocks, I think will be on the beach itself.
Are you ready for this?
Oh, my goodness.
Welcome to Tyninghame Beach
the second of our glorious East
Lothian beaches of today.
And you know what apart from me and those two walking their dog
I think we're the only ones here.
But you know, the first time I came to Tyninghame beach a couple of years ago,
my jaw literally hit the floor,
well, the sand, when I first laid eyes on it, because as you can see,
it's just absolutely unbelievably beautiful, utterly stunning.
And just completely deserted.
Now, the position of the beach is a little bit further south
than where we were at Drift Café.
So over there
you can see Bass Rock again.
But just look at this fabulous view.
This really is stunning stuff.
Beautiful, crystal clear water.
You could almost be in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, couldn't you?
Definitely worth that 20 minute walk through the woods.
What do you think?
Do you know if this was in Tenerife or Mallorca?
They'd have built everything around the beach, wouldn't they?
They would have been hotels, apartments,
restaurant, spas, shops, nightclubs, everything you can think of.
Now, I'm not against hotels and bars and restaurants
and nightclubs, but sometimes something like this,
which is completely deserted, it's just so, so beautiful.
You don't want it to be spoiled by anything.
I mean, just look, miles and miles of beach
and only two people on the horizon.
There are some really interesting birds out there on the sea.
They're not seagulls, I don't think, because they don't make seagull noises.
They're sort of going, Oh-oooo Oh-oooo!
I’ll have to look that up when I get home.
And I
think before we leave Tyninghame beach and head off
for our last of our three East Lothian beaches,
I think we'll head up over there onto the Clifftops,
see what we can see.
There we are the full the magnificence
of Tyninghame beach.
Oh, well,
our third and final East Lothian Beach is just over there.
But here's the thing.
As you can see, the river comes out into the sea just here
and that's between Tyninghame and our next beach destination.
So what I'm going to have to do is go all the way back to the car
park, 20 minutes through the woods, drive around and over a bridge
which is much further down the river to get to our final destination.
So please stick with me.
Beach number three is inbound.
Well, a very short car journey, and we're here
at our third and final beach in East Lothian today.
This is Belhaven Beach, the home of the famous Bridge to Nowhere.
Even before we get close, you can see it's
another expanse of golden sand stretching
right off into the distance to that headland over there, which we stood on,
and looked this way about 45 minutes ago.
Well, let's go across the Bridge to Nowhere.
Woof Woof!
Well, I've done a vlog about the Bridge to Nowhere before,
and I'll put a link to it on the screen and in the notes to this video.
But here's the thing.
To get to Belhaven beach, you've got to cross over this bridge,
over the little brook.
But when the tide comes in,
it completely swamps the brook and the first part of the beach.
So it looks when the tides raised that the bridge just effectively
goes across into the water, hence the Bridge to Nowhere.
But at low tide, like now, obviously we can cross over the bridge and
get onto the beach
and that's the brook.
It looks pretty innocuous at the moment, but when the tide comes in,
this whole area will be completely submerged.
And once we’re here on the other
side, we’re on Belhaven beach.
And this is the third of all gorgeous,
expansive East Lothian beaches
for today. Even though we're a good five miles further down
the coast, you can still see Bass Rock there.
Another absolutely glorious, glorious beach, beautiful.
We are really blessed in East
Lothian with some superb beaches, some of the best in Scotland,
if not some of the best in the world.
Well, that's us done.
We visited three of the best
beaches in East Lothian, Gullane beach, Tyninghame beach.
And just behind me, Belhaven beach, near Dunbar.
If you're coming to Edinburgh on holiday or for a few days, it's
well worth doing this as a sort of road trip.
To be honest.
You could spend an entire day at any of the three beaches
that we've been to today.
But if you've got a car doing them in that order, Gullane
Tyninghame and finishing here at Dunbar, where there are plenty of restaurants
and bars and fish and chip shops afterwards, you can have a really nice day
seeing some of the incredible scenery here in East Lothian.
Thank you so much for watching this episode of RogVLOG.
If you enjoyed the video, please do subscribe to the YouTube channel.
It's entirely free to subscribe.
All you need to do is to hit that subscribe button.
Until the next video.
Remember, there's always something to see.
So get out there and find it.