Fighting spirit on the farm

Acall from a friend from our university days at Edinburgh to visit her and her husband saw the Doyenne and me setting off for the pretty East Lothian village of East Linton.

East Lothian generally is full of memories from my schooldays when I was at boarding school in Musselburgh.

In the summer terms when we were not watching a cricket match, friends and I cycled all over East Lothian, as often as not along the coast road of the Firth of Forth through the old fishing villages of Cockenzie and Port Seton, and the smarter villages of Aberlady and Gullane and Dirleton to posh North Berwick.

It’s all changed since those far-off, halcyon days.

Cockenzie and Port Seton were still working fishertouns although their fishing fleets were much reduced from the glory days when the boats supplied large amounts of herring – they were famous for the quality of their kippers – to the grand Edinburgh hooses.

The A1 was a two-lane road; today it’s a fast dual carriageway tearing past all the old familiar places.

To the south of the A1 the prominent whaleback shape of Traprain Law rises from the flat plain.

It’s been more than 60 years since I climbed to its summit – much the same time since I last climbed North Berwick Law.

An arch made from the jawbone of a whale dominated the summit of the Berwick Law, a relic of the longgone whaling fleet which sailed out of neighbouring Dunbar, a dozen miles along the coast.

My Loanhead aunties, two small, fierce ladies whose lives were regulated by the certainty that they were always right, told me that the fishermen used the jawbone as a navigation mark to guide them into North Berwick harbour – and I’ve never doubted it since.

With age and the ravages of the weather the jaw bone became unsafe and was removed.

It’s been replaced with a gleaming white fibre glass replica. Not the same but it’s a nod to the history of the site.

They’ve a touch of originality in the names of their businesses. We smiled when we passed Pressing Needs – laundry services.

Three miles offshore the Bass Rock guards the entrance to the Firth of Forth.

An internationally important gannet and seabird sanctuary, Sir David Attenborough has described it as one of the 12 wildlife wonders of the world.

Jacobite prisoners from the Battle of Culloden and French POWs from the Napoleonic Wars were imprisoned on the Rock.

There was no chance of escape and the conditions were brutally harsh as the prisoners had only basic shelter and were exposed to whatever the weather threw at them.

A bus going to Spott reminded me of a story of the Whitson fighting spirit.

The first Battle of Dunbar in 1296 was fought on Spottsmuir, part of the farm of Spott, near Dunbar, when the army of Edward Longshanks, King Edward I of England, Hammer of the Scots, soundly routed the Scottish army under King John Balliol, known disparagingly thereafter as Toom Tabard or Empty Shirt. Family tradition has it that the tenant of the farm was a Whitson.

History does not relate what happened to the old relative after the battle, but I like to think that the bold boy gave them all a good round of the guns for the shocking state they left his farm in.

Trouble was, in those days the winners were inclined to duff you up if they thought you were talking out of turn, so perhaps as the better part of valour he just kept a cam souch – kept quiet.

Balliol didn’t take part in the battle and fled north after it, chased by Edward.

Having accepted Balliol’s grovelling surrender at Stracathro church, near Edzell, Edward returned to England, taking with him the Stone of Scone, or Stone of Destiny, the embodiment of Scotland’s nationhood.

Dirleton Castle, in the village of the same name, has to be one of the most excitingly authentic old castles to explore

It doesn’t just look formidable, it looks all that a 13th Century fortress should look, and has a particularly fine example of a medieval doocot.

It helped when I was a schoolboy that it was just across the road from the excellent Open Arms Hotel where an indulgent uncle and aunt would take me for slap-up Sunday lunches.

My picture shows the small, red sandstone North Berwick harbour. Never as prosperous as its neighbours because of difficulties making the harbour in north-east winds, creel fishing for crabs and lobster was the principal occupation.

From the creels stacked on the harbour side while the shellfish season is closed, little has changed.

Little has changed either in the old village of East Linton.

It took me back seeing the familiar red pantile roofs so evocative of East Lothian, and the narrow streets and painted frontages.

We hope we behaved well enough to get invited back again.

Little has changed at the small, red sandstone inlet of North Berwick harbour.