Burnmouth is the last village on Scotland’s east coast before crossing the border into England. It’s also one of those divided villages with a steep, winding road down to the harbour. We booked a cottage in Lower Burnmouth for a week last July / August, and I was surprised to find that the small settlement around the harbour actually counts as four villages!

If you turn left at the bottom of the road, you end up in Partanhall.

Partanhall

Partanhall

Ahead is Burnmouth Harbour.

Burnmouth Harbour

Burnmouth Harbour

Burnmouth Harbour

To the right is Lower Burnmouth (and beyond that, Ross and Cowdrait of which we have no pictures). The colourful 3 storey houses, numbers 14-20 Lower Burnmouth, were designed by the architect Basil Spence in the 1950s. The lower floors were intended to be net stores, but now serve as garages. The little white building to their left in the view from the harbour is The Old Lobster House, our home for the week, a cottage converted from an old lobster holding pen.

Lower Burnmouth from harbour

Basil Spence houses, Lower Burnmouth

Here are some closer views of the exterior:

Old Lobster House

Old Lobster House

Old Lobster House

Old Lobster House

Entrance

Old Lobster House

Door knocker

And the interior:

Kitchen / dining

Living room

Living room

Main bedroom

Bedroom 2

But what had really sold us on this cottage when we saw it online was this view from the main bedroom window:However, when we arrived we were very disappointed to find that it looked like this:

It would be some days before high tide was at a suitable time for us to see it, i.e. not while we were out during the day or while we slept. However, we found the view endlessly fascinating and have many pictures in different conditions of weather and tide. Here’s more from the main bedroom:

Main bedroom

Main bedroom

Main bedroom

From bedroom 2:

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 2

And from downstairs:

Dining area window

Dining area window

Downstairs window

Downstairs window

Downstairs window

Kitchen window

We had a wonderful week in this cottage, and did far more than just gaze at the sea, mesmerising though that was. And we learned something too. Strolling round the harbour on our first evening, we came across this sculpture:

It’s one part of a memorial to the East Coast Fishing Disaster of 1881, of which we’d never heard, and we made it our mission to track down the other three sculptures. The whole of my next post will be dedicated to the disaster.