Head For The Heights
The beautiful village of St Abbs offers all you need for a wonderful day of scenic walks, bird watching and tasty fresh seafood
IF you’re looking for dramatic coastal vistas with some exceptional seafood thrown in, then look no further than the picturesque fishing village of St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast.
Surrounded by jagged cliffs and crystal clear sea, the village is popular with birdwatchers, scramblers and scuba divers. To the north of the village lies the St Abbs Head Nature Reserve, looked after by the National Trust for Scotland, which has established sign-marked trails to take in the best of the coastline.
“It gives you the feeling of being somewhere really wild and remote, yet it’s just off the A1,” says head ranger, Ciaran Hatsell. “You can easily spend hours in the summer months watching and listening to the thousands of seabirds who nest in the high cliffs.”
Indeed, the reserve is home to more than 50,000 sea birds, and its location just off the main road makes it one of the UK’S most accessible seabird colonies.
As you wander the cliff-top trails, you can spot guillemots, kittiwakes and razorbills.
“The cliffs provide spectacular vantage points from which to watch these seabirds,” Ciaran says. “Look out for northern gannets too – in 2017 they bred at St Abb’s Head for the first time in living memory.”
One of the finest viewpoints in the reserve is overlooking the St Abbs Head Lighthouse, which was built by famous engineers David and Thomas Stevenson in 1862. And if you want to linger longer you can – the lighthouse keeper’s cottage has been turned into a stunning self-catering holiday lodge.
If you don’t have a head for heights, the reserve also has inland trails which lead to the peaceful
Mire Loch, which is equally impressive for its resident wildlife.
“The surrounding woodland resonates with birdsong in the summer months and is a refuge
for migrating birds in the spring and autumn.”
After you’ve worked up an appetite on the reserve’s many trails, take a short trek down to the St Abbs itself – and don’t be surprised if the harbour looks familiar.
The picturesque little seaside village is the last place you’d expect to be big in Hollywood, but its screen credits are pretty impressive.
Most notably, St Abbs starred as Thor’s home on Earth, “New Asgard”, in the 2019 film Avengers: Endgame. The locals are proud of their connection with the god of thunder and had added a signpost declaring the village officially “twinned with New Asgard”.
Don’t miss a wander along the coast where you can see memorials by Jill Watson to the local fishermen lost in the Eyemouth Disaster of 1881, when a severe storm took the lives of 189 fishermen from the area.
Keen surfers can find a perfect sandy beach just south of the village at Coldingham Bay.
You can pick up recommendations on local eateries, of which there are several, in the St Abbs Visitor Centre and learn about the tale of the 7th-century Northumbrian princess Aebbe, who the village is named after, that struggled ashore here on being shipwrecked and went on to found a nunnery.
A day wandering its serene harbour and cliffs will show you why St Abbs is so beloved by locals and location scouts alike.