The Herald - The Herald Magazine
The walk The Golf Coast
Location: Aberlady Bay and Gullane, East Lothian
Grade: Low level coastal walk
Distance: 6miles/10km
Time: 3-3.5 hours
AS I crossed the old wooden bridge from the Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve car park, I recalled that this was where the historical novelist Nigel Tranter used to come and walk when thinking through the plots for his great books. It didn’t surprise me.
Cross that archaic bridge over the mudflats and you go into another world, a world of peace and tranquillity, removed from the buzz of traffic and tarmac, an atmosphere of bird call and sea fret. Curlew cries filled the air and the piercing call of oystercatchers came from the shore.
I followed a footpath that ran inland away from Aberlady Bay, negotiated a narrow and natural tunnel through a copse of sea buckthorn and exited this green world to Marl Loch, with its reedy shoreline and family of swans. Look out here for moorhens and mallard, and in spring and summer you will see damselflies and dragonflies. On the other side of the path, green swards lead to one of this coastline’s myriad golf courses. It is why this part of East Lothian is known as the Golf Coast.
In the distance I could see the dunes of Gullane Sands, a place I once associated with pain and discomfort. In the 1960s, when I was training hard as a young athlete, my coach used to bring me here at the start of each winter to sprint up and down the dunes. It was good strength training and built up the thighs in particular. Years later, the late Jock Wallace used to bring his Rangers football players here for similar hard graft. Today I was the only person on the beach.
Perhaps my memory was playing tricks, or maybe the sea breezes have had an eroding effect over the past half-century, but the dunes appear smaller and less impressive than they used to, although Gullane Sands is still a very impressive beach.
At the northern point of the sands, where the beach gives way to a rocky foreshore, I climbed to Gullane Point and watched gannets diving for food. Rafts of eider ducks floated closer to the shore.
Gullane Point is an outcrop of igneous rock and is a good place to spot grebes and red-throated divers during the winter. From here a variety of paths make their way east towards the village of Gullane and I chose the highest, following the top of the dunes with the sea on my left and another golf course to my right, passing a variety of rocky inlets and sandy bays. Soon the path veered inland towards a row of large houses, their privacy ensured by a wall that ran all the way to a car park where I returned to the tarmac road.
Leaving the coast behind, I followed a narrow road between high walls to the main road that runs through Gullane. I crossed the road and followed Saltcoats Road to yet another golf course, the Luffness Links, where countless numbers of Donald Trump lookalikes were skelping wee balls around. With my trekking poles and rucksack, I guess I must have looked as incongruous to them as they did to me. I’ve never quite understood golf or its attractions.
I was now on the John Muir Way, which ran alongside the golf course, past the remains of Saltcoats Castle, to the busy A198, which I crossed before following the wide pavement all the way back to the start at Aberlady Bay. CAMERON MCNEISH
ROUTE PLANNER
Map: OS 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 66 (Edinburgh) or 1:25,000 Explorer sheet 351 (Dunbar & North Berwick)
Start/Finish: Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve car park (GR: NT471804)
Distance: 6 miles/10km
Time: 3-3.5 hours
Route: Leave car park and cross wooden bridge into reserve. Follow hardpack path N through grasslands. Enter tunnel through dense buckthorn grove and exit after 200m beside Marl Loch. Keep on hardpack path until it merges into a grassy track. Shortly after, TL at junction then keep straight on at next junction where a path goes Right. Continue towards the dunes, climb over the top and down to Gullane Sands. Follow beach R to Gullane Point. Continue E on path to a bay with signs indicating end of Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve. Take path climbing steeply to top of hill, TL and almost immediately TL again to follow the clifftop path until you reach a track. TL onto it and with large wall on your R continue to road. TR here and follow road to A198. TL and take the second on R – Saltcoats Road. Follow road across golf links and TR onto John Muir Way. Follow JMW signs back to the start