Cove to Siccar Point

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Dunglass Collegiate Church

On our last day in Lower Burnmouth, we chose a walk on the Berwickshire Coastal Path from Cove to Siccar Point. However, the morning was wet and drizzly so we decided to postpone that till the afternoon when the forecast was better. Our first stop then became the ruined Dunglass Collegiate Church, built for Sir Alexander Home around 1443. We didn’t realise it had a connection to our later walk until we saw this memorial to Sir James Hall. It’s not terribly legible, but the important reference is to his favourite science of geology.

A nearby information board explained that Sir James (1761-1832) was a friend of James Hutton, the father of modern geology. In 1788 he and mathematician John Playfair accompanied Hutton on a boat-trip from Dunglass to see nearby rock formations at Siccar Point. The expedition convinced them of Hutton’s new theory that the Earth was not thousands but millions of years old.

After giving that some serious thought, we had a bit of fun before leaving!

John at Dunglass
Anabel at Dunglass

We then headed to the nearby village of Cockburnspath, the eastern end of no fewer than three long-distance footpaths: the Southern Upland Way, the Sir Walter Scott Way and the Berwickshire Coastal Path. Despite this, it appeared not to boast any kind of café. However, it’s a pretty little place with an unusual round tower on its parish church.

Cockburnspath
Cockburnspath Parish Church
Cockburnspath

The Market Cross was erected in 1503 by James IV of Scotland to mark his marriage to Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England, to whom he presented the lands of Cockburnspath as part of her dowry. This was known as the Marriage of the Thistle and the Rose, representing the Scottish and English national symbols, and the cross has carved emblems of a thistle on two of its faces and a rose on the other two.

Cockburnspath Market Cross
Cockburnspath Market Cross
Cockburnspath Market Cross

Still in search of sustenance we set of for Dunbar. No photographs here – as soon as we arrived we were dive-bombed by a seagull. I heard John cry out behind me as a torrent of guano shot past me, and I assumed it had hit him. In fact, the gull had attacked his head and he was bleeding. Our next quest was therefore for antiseptic wipes, and once John was cleaned up we had lunch – fortunately no shortage of cafes in Dunbar!

The weather having improved as predicted, we got our afternoon walk. The starting point, Cove, is one of the villages with memorials to the East Coast Fishing Disaster of 1881, which you can see in my earlier post. The natural harbour here is, unusually, accessed via a tunnel. We were already finding the rock formations interesting.

Tunnel to Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour
Cove Harbour

Climbing to the clifftops, we had great views back down to the harbour and a natural sandstone arch known as Hollow Rock.

Cove Harbour
Hollow Rock
Hollow Rock

As we continued along the cliffs we could see the Pease Bay Leisure Park coming into view. It’s a beautiful location, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend my holiday in amongst so many identikit chalets.

Pease Bay
Above Pease Bay
Pease Bay

Having descended to Pease Bay, we then had to climb back up the other side. We saw neither slow toads nor attacking sheep.

Pease Bay roadsign
Pease Bay roadsign

The path took us through farmland to a minor road. Here we turned off for Siccar Point, passing the ruins of the 16th century St Helen’s Church – and a stray toilet! What’s that all about? Very strange.

St Helen’s Church
St Helen’s Church
Stray toilet

The view from Siccar Point was stunning.

Siccar Point
Siccar Point
Siccar Point

A very steep slope led down to the rocks to which James Hutton sailed in search of a visible “unconformity” to demonstrate his theories of the processes and cycles that shaped the Earth. We did not venture down the slope which looked rather precarious, and the unconformity was clear from above anyway. To spot it, have a look at the photograph below and compare it to the explanatory leaflet.

The grey, tilted rocks are Silurian greywacke formed in an ancient ocean. The much younger Upper Devonian Red Sandstone above it formed on land 65 million years later, during which time the older rocks were changed by folding, faulting, uplift and erosion. Hutton’s Unconformity is what separates them, a time gap in the normal geological sequence.

Hutton’s Unconformity at Siccar Point
Hutton’s Unconformity explained (Edinburgh Geological Society)

After our geology lesson, we turned round and returned to Cove. Out and back, this walk totalled 11km. As we approached the harbour we could see the tunnel exit clearly and, when we got to the carpark, I was delighted to see the same little mint-green Nissan that I’d spotted in Berwick a couple of days before.

Our day wasn’t quite finished yet. We dropped into St Abbs to complete our set of East Coast Fishing Disaster memorials, and had a walk round the harbour while we were there.

St Abbs
St Abbs
St Abbs
St Abbs
St Abbs
St Abbs

Then it was time to return to our cottage, have our final dinner, and pack up ready to leave the next morning. We’d had a wonderful week in Berwickshire.

Scotland, UK , , , ,

66 Comments »

  2. I’m glad you enjoyed that area and had the time for a coastal walk. It is a very beautiful stretch of coast (well, that massive caravan park aside). That harbour at Cove is almost a perfect circle!

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  3. Yikes, that gull! I’ve had my own bad encounters with them, from that jerk gull that stole my ice cream in Brighton, to one that crapped on my head in Penzance (and it was a lot of poop. More than you would think could come out of a bird), but I’ve never actually been attacked! Scary! Marcus would love all those rocks though – he’s always trying to point out different geological eras and such to me.

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  4. Pingback: Jo’s Monday walk : Beyond the River | restlessjo

  6. Slow toads, Silurian greywacke and a loo with a great view – this day had it all. The views are stunning. We were swooped by cranky seagulls once. It turned out they were nesting in the grass on the cliffs. I wonder if that was the source of your bird’s irritation. Poor John.

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  8. Such amazing photographs. I love the colours in the rocks and the sandstone, the shapes of the layers. What a fascinating walk that was and what a trove of good images you brought back. How lucky we are to live in this age of digital photography. I hate to think how much we’d all be spending if we were still taking slides or rolls. But I think what would happen is that we wouldn’t take more than one-tenth of what we do now! Oh, liked you bit of fun as well.

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  9. Cove looks brilliant. A tunnel into the harbour…it’s like something the Famous Five or Secret Seven would stumble upon. The Slow Toad sign made me smile. I don’t think they’d stand a chance , the gulls in the area seem pretty vicious!

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  10. Hi Anabel – our geology class leader U3A’s hero is James Hutton … and so keeps reminding us about Siccar Point and its history … he’s been there. Gorgeous photos and captions to go with them.

    Crazy critter attacks … glad to see all are safe … while frankly that toilet would have been useful when you visited your friends the other day!!

    Take care and I’ve something to email you … and the rock formations I’ve a post to do when I visited a Fashion House of all things in London strange but true! More anon – all the best – Hilary

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  12. Fabulous photos! Like you, I wouldn’t want to stay in one of those little homes, but the surrounding areas are beautiful. Is it normal for gulls to attack people? Glad at least that the sheep didn’t do the same!

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  15. Wow, I can’t believe the gull attacked you. Glad there were no serious injuries. Love the rock formations, and that view is incredible. I could just stand there and look at that all day. The slow toads sign made me laugh.

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  16. Another area I’ve not visited yet. Looks really good. Just finished a Philippa Gregory book about the royal Tudors. Ruthless bunch at times. Very fond of beheading any rivals.

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  18. Hi, Anabel – I had never heard of ‘attacking sheep’ before. I will need to add this to my ‘List of Cautions’. 😀
    Thank you for continuing to take us along on your gallivants. I always look forward to these travels!

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    • It was quite sore and we worried his scalp would get infected! Of course, all was fine, but it was scary at the time. Damn bird kept circling and we were quite worried about going back to the car. Fortunately it must have got bored by then, or found someone else to pester.

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  21. All of these places look perfectly charming and great locations for a ramble. When I was 14, I was attacked by sheep in Ettrick (appropriately as I was visiting the statue of James Hogg). I was eating a bag of crisps and they wanted some. They were trying to grab the packet out of my hand and eventually succeeded. They got pretty aggressive when all of the crisps were gobbled up as they wanted me to supply more. I had hoof shaped bruises on my legs. It was somewhat sore but also pretty hysterical even at the time.

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    • Oh no, so there really are attacking sheep! They always seem so docile and run away when we get near. We always laugh at notices about Danger Sheep and joke they must be relatives of Danger Mouse, but perhaps we’ve been wrongly deriding farmers’ lack of punctuation all along.

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  22. Fascinating – wonderful tour of somewhere I don’t know at all. Another one for the list. I particularly like the look of Cockburnspath and Cove and, obviously, the solo loo demands further investigation – as does why the toads are slow round there. I confess I am growing to dislike seagulls – generally nasty, aggressive, creatures. Hope Mr Gallivanter recovered quickly. Are you being stalked by Andrew Marr?

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  24. What a lovely and educational walk. And it looked like the sun finally came out at the end, just in time for your amazing view from Siccar Point. And the geology lesson to top it off. I love the mint-green Nissan; I always love these small colorful cars, like this one and the Fiats we saw all over Italy. 🙂

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  25. Looks like a lovely walk despite the gray sky. I am not certain I am a bit fan of the Pease Bay Leisure Park; looks way too crowded and those mobile homes aren’t very pretty. The rest of the settings are quite beautiful. (Suzanne)

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    • It’s a lovely setting, but the park is so uniform. I have seen much nicer ones where the mobile homes and cabins are more scattered, but it still wouldn’t be my thing. However, we’re all different and the view of the sea must be lovely (if you’re in the front row anyway).

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  26. Amazing photos of a lovely part of Scotland. Cove and the tunnel looks wonderful and some of those views are spectacular. Hopefully we will be able to get back up there at some stage in the future after all of this lockdown business has eased a little.

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  27. Just walking along, minding your own business and attacked by a gull! There’s no justice, is there? But you did get a bit of blue sky for the most scenic bit of the walk and those rock formations are beautiful 🤗💕

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  28. I featured Dunglass Church in the Church Magazine some years ago. For most of my chioldhood and early youth the family spent holidays at Lochearnhead and toured around much of Perthshire. Some years ago I had occasion to look at Lochearn and was appalled at what they had done to it. They merely carved an area, cut down the trees and built dozens and dozens ot these. cabins almost as identical as the photograph you showed in your post. Leisure Park?? Well, I can say in all honesty that I have walked the length of the Loch from Lochearnhead to St. Fillians.

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  29. Excellent. Some amazing places there. Dunglass is lovely. Co’path doesn’t have a lot, unfortunately, fine place though it is.

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