Belhaven Bay to Dunbar – Along the Clifftop Path

The walk

This is an out-and-back clifftop walk from the Belhaven Bay car park on Shore Road to Dunbar's harbours and back, 2.5 km (a mile and a half) each way. Visit East Lothian allows 45 minutes each way, so about two hours with time at the harbour. The ground is a mix of surfaced path, grass and a concrete promenade, with several flights of steps. The trail's own page, from Visit East Lothian, has the route notes.

Belhaven Bay comes first, a huge beach of golden sand backed by dunes and salt marsh, looking over the Tyne estuary, the Firth of Forth and the Bass Rock. Cormorants, eider ducks, gulls and waders can be watched here. At the near corner stands the Bridge to Nowhere, a footbridge over the burn that runs out across the sands. At low tide you can cross it onto the sands; at high tide the sea surrounds it and it is left standing on its own, which is how it got its name.

The path then runs past Winterfield golf course and along the Baird Promenade, paid for and given to the town by the Baird family in 1893. Take care near the cliff edge and beside the golf course, and keep dogs on a lead there.

It ends at Dunbar's two harbours, Cromwell and Victoria. By the water is the Battery, built in 1781 on the columnar basalt of Lamer Island to defend the town from privateers. Beyond them are the broken red walls of the castle, which Black Agnes, Countess of Dunbar, held against the Earl of Salisbury for five months in 1338. The castle is home to a large colony of kittiwakes, and the ground it stands on was an Iron Age promontory fort before it. John Muir, who was born in Dunbar, has a birthplace museum on the High Street.

There are toilets at the car park, with accessible ones, and in Dunbar. The High Street, a few minutes up from the harbour, has cafés, pubs and shops.