Going to Berwick-on-Tweed? Rats! Another failure.

So, today we decided (again) that we were going to Berwick on Tweed. It's pronounced Berrick, by the way, although Lerwick (in the Shetland Islands) is pronounced just the way it looks and we plan to go there too someday.

Ever since we arrived in Scotland, we have seen signs for Berwick on Tweed. If we are heading for Glasgow or Stirling, we will see signs for Glasgow, Stirling, The Forth Bridge, and Berwick on Tweed. If we are just heading for Costco and are using a reasonably major route, we will see signs for the Forth Bridge and Berwick on Tweed.  If we are driving home from church, we see signs for Berwick on Tweed, but not the other places. Sounds like a pretty important place, don't you think? Either that, or the city has the most remarkable tourism/public relations department.

We have been to Glasgow, Stirling, Costco and the Forth Bridge, multiple times each, but have not yet made it to Berwick on Tweed, despite our deciding a few months ago that we would go there, to find out why the place is so heavily featured on road signs, as soon as the days lengthened and the weather improved. Well, the days have lengthened so thoroughly that they are starting to shorten again, and the weather is as improved as it could possible be, so today was the day. We set out this morning for Berwick on Tweed.

We did not set out at 6 a.m. our favorite time for travel. Richard took a nasty fall when he was out running and I was out walking on Monday morning last. He was running down a concrete path, when either his knee collapsed under him or he tripped on something, and he went over bollemakiesie down the path. "Bollemakiesie" translates as 'somersault' but the translation fails to convey the sense of your entire world thrown into turmoil as you tumble, bounce and scrape down a concrete slope. He incurred significant injury to his knees and his musculature in general but not, strangely enough, the sturdily indestructible pants he was wearing. We both hope that he tripped, rather than his knee just giving way, as his knees have been reliable for many a long year and we hope they will stay that way for many years to come. Anyway, we have had a less than pleasant week, as he spent much of it in pain and a fair amount of it looking rather pale, and we had previously decided that we would spend today doing nothing in particular, to give him a rest day to recover. So we lolled around this morning and then went for a gentle stroll in the park, after which he declared himself restored to health and let's do something, like travel along the coast to good ole Berwick on Tweed. So we looked at Google maps, not quite carefully enough, and saw that if we took the A1 we could get to Berwick on Tweed in an hour and 2 minutes. We decided to do that, belting across country to our destination at 70 miles per hour, and then meandering back gently along the coast for as much of the day as we felt like, after which we would head back to Edinburgh.

So off we went, leaving our spotlessly cleaned and tidied flat at 10 am. (We did flat inspections for some of the young missionaries this past week, and we felt that the least we could do was get our own flat to the same standard we expected of theirs.) We drove for a little more than 20 minutes before we realized we had left something important behind us, so we went back for it, which gave us a fine opportunity to apply sunscreen to anyone who had been neglected in the earlier ministration.
So off we went, again, leaving our flat shortly before 11 am.

Dunbar Bay. Castle on the headland to the right.

We are somewhat distractible drivers, especially on P-days. We enjoy being that way. If we see something unusual or an interesting road sign while we are driving along, we will frequently turn off to explore. On this occasion, we saw a curious road sign which we thought indicated a sort of loop road through a nearby town, which would then rejoin the main road. After we had seen a couple of these we decided to test our theory, so we turned off to Haddington, on the assumption that we would follow the road decorously through the little town and then return to the freeway. It didn't work exactly like that. We did go through the town at a most considerate and law abiding speed, and we might even have found our way back to the freeway, only there was a turnoff to Hailes Castle that looked promising, so we took it. (distracted again!)

Within a minute or two we were on the narrowest road we have ever been on, and that includes the road to Norton Malreward six years ago, which until now held the record. 

A two-way country road, narrower than a single driveway

The hedges on both sides of the road were clipping our mirrors. There was no question of being able to turn around, and our greatest concern was what to do if we met a car coming in the other direction.  Fortunately, we were the only people on the road until we came to a little track along which a couple or cars were parked, with a sign that said the track led to a footpath which led to Hailes castle. If there had been any sign of Hailes castle itself it might have been different, but with only these scant indicators our interest in the castle evaporated immediately. Neither of us was in the mood for a rough hike of unknown length. And at that moment, just as we were pulling back onto the road, a car came along from the other direction. We were at the one place where we could pass each other, by dint of pulling further onto the track. We could even have turned at this point, although it might have been tricky with the parked cars in the way, but we had reason to believe that the road we were on would also lead to Dunbar, which was one of the destinations we had planned to visit on our way back from Berwick on Tweed.

So off we went to Dunbar. We decided to visit it on our way out instead of on the way back. It is a nice, seaside town. We walked a little way along the coastal trail and saw North Berwick and the Bass Rock, the area we visited a couple of weeks ago, in the near distance. Then we picked up some lunch and picnicked on a bench overlooking the ruins of an ancient castle, and the harbour.

Dunbar Castle ruin and Harbour

Castles come in a huge variety of flavors and styles, but for me (Richard) one of the key questions is whether it is a ruin or a complete, furnished castle. Edinburgh and Stirling are complete furnished castles--Holyrood Palace isn't exactly a castle but is a complete working palace, actively used by the royal family to this day. Dunbar is a ruin. The headland on the left of the photo used to be joined to the main castle by an elevated arch over the inlet (since collapsed and gone). The bit sticking up in the photo is a remaining upright wall, the rest of the structure is gone. The harbour, on the other hand is a complete working harbour, with a small fleet of fishing boats plying their trade daily. In fact the harbour was modernised and rendered safer by blasting away the castle ruins and opening a new harbour mouth out to the sea (on the left of the harbour in the above picture). The Brits have no respect for their own history sometimes! Actually, if you examine the history of many ancient structures then this is just continuing an on-going practice. Dunbar Castle has been a fortified structure since 600 AD and has been built up and torn down multiple times over the centuries as politics and needs changed.

I (Louise) couldn't quite finish my sandwich and was wondering how to go about giving it to one of the birds, either one of the gulls or the kittiwakes. Fortunately I didn't and just threw it away, as a few minutes later when we were walking around the harbour we saw a sign threatening a 50 pound fine for anyone who feeds the gulls. It is a fishing port, and they don't want the gulls to be any more of a nuisance than they already are. It seems to us the seagulls are unpopular birds, everywhere except Utah.

We took a picture of a bird sitting on top the pole. You can almost see the disgruntled look on the bird's face as he tries to insist, "I'm not a seagull, I'm a Kittiwake! Feed me, FEED ME!!". Unfortunately ornithologists would not support the argument as Kittiwakes are members of the gull family, and neither would nature-lovers who would say whether a Kittiwake is a gull or not, it does not thrive on a diet of potato crisps and sweets. So tough luck bird, just continue to sit on your pole and sulk.

There is a recently restored battery just next to the harbour. It is a blend of ancient and modern, and has ten or twelve viewpoints over the sea. Each one gives a very different view from the ones next to it, and each one is utterly beautiful.

Amphitheater in the Battery

Natural plants and cubes with plant labels in the Battery

Old Cromwell harbour. Still in use. 

The Battery too has a variegated history, having been set up to defend the town from sea-going marauders--including American revolutionaries during that troublesome colony's war of independence. Later it was a hospital and now it has been significantly refurbished as a community park with plants, an open-air theatre and great seaside views of islands such as Bass Rock and the Isle of May.

One of the signs at a viewpoint overlooking the islands says, "Boys come from Bass Rock and girls from the Isle of May", without any further explanation, so we are left to speculate on the charming traditions or implications of this.

We spent a delightful couple of hours in Dunbar and then decided to go home to Edinburgh instead of proceeding to Berwick on Tweed

After we got back to the flat Richard was looking at a map, and we realised that we will not be visiting Berwick on Tweed at all. It is in England, just a few miles south of the Border with Scotland, and thus outside of our mission. We can roam around Scotland and Ireland as freely as we care to, but are not supposed to leave our mission area. So we are left like Moses, gazing across the Jordan to the promised land--except we don't have any strong reason for wanting to go to BoT except that it features on a bunch of road signs. Also we are not prophets, Old Testament or restoration. We will continue our exploration of seaside towns but stop before the border.