Haddington – Up the Tyne from the Nungate Bridge

The walk

The Riverside Walk follows the River Tyne upstream from the Nungate Bridge in Haddington to Long Cram: 1.7 km (a little over a mile) each way, and about an hour, back the same way or through the town. It is mostly level, on tarmac and gravel. The walk's own leaflet, East Lothian Council's Paths around Haddington, has the map.

Invading armies once came into the town over the Nungate Bridge, and there has been a bridge here since 1282 or earlier. Its three arches of red sandstone most likely went up soon after the siege of 1548, and masons' marks on some blocks hint that the builders reused stone from the ruins of St Mary's. As a girl, Jane Welsh Carlyle, a Haddington doctor's daughter who married the historian Thomas Carlyle, taught herself in secret to walk its parapet.

Upstream stands St Mary's, founded in 1380, more than a century in the building, and largely ruined in the siege. In 1561, at John Knox's urging, the town walled off the roofless choir and mended the nave for worship; the choir stayed open to the weather until 1973. Knox is thought to have been born across the river in Giffordgate, and was trained for the priesthood here. Inside, look for Jane Welsh Carlyle's memorial stone in the choir and the Maitland monument of 1675, all black marble and alabaster, in the Lauderdale Aisle.

Beside the churchyard lies St Mary's Pleasance, a walled garden remade in the 1970s as a Scottish garden of the 1600s, next to Haddington House of 1648, the oldest house in the town. Look for its laburnum alley, hornbeam walk and mount.

St Mary's welcomes visitors from 1.30pm to 4pm most days from May to September, and at Easter, but not through the winter. The Pleasance is free, and opens at 9am, closing at 5pm from April to September and at 3.30pm from October to March.

The Waterside Bistro, by the Nungate Bridge, has tables out front by the river. CAMRA's listing, last surveyed in January 2026, gives food from noon every day; check before you go.