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!
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.
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.
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.
Climbing to the clifftops, we had great views back down to the harbour and a natural sandstone arch known as 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.
Having descended to Pease Bay, we then had to climb back up the other side. We saw neither slow toads nor attacking sheep.
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.
The view from Siccar Point was stunning.
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.
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.
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.
From here, a signpost directed us through woodland to the lower slopes of Cockburn Law. The unusual Retreat House, a circular late 18th century hunting lodge, could be seen below.
This was the second last day of our 2019 Berwickshire break, so just one more post to go. This one is linked to Jo’s latest 
I preferred the children’s Fairy Trail …
Just inside, a woodland path led up to the 218m summit of Duns Law. As we climbed, we could see the castle gateway below us with the Cheviot Hills behind it.
On the hill’s flat summit is a Covenanters’ Stone, which marks the spot where General Alexander Leslie raised the Covenanters’ standard in 1639 in defiance of King Charles I’s imposition of Episcopalianism on his Scottish subjects.
We descended part-way, then struck off across the flank of the hill where we passed a stone on the site of the old town of Dunse (sic), destroyed in the border raids of 1588. We could also see the castle peeking through the trees below us.
This third visit to Eyemouth may have ended our holiday, but there are several gaps still to fill in. There’s much more information about this part of Scotland to come.
The path reached the road at the upper part of Burnmouth. As the old sign tells us, it’s 6 miles to Berwick and 52 to Edinburgh. The pub is The First and Last – the first or last in Scotland, depending on your direction of travel.
After spending the afternoon in Eyemouth we had to walk back. Remember The First and Last in Burnmouth? We naturally stopped for a beer and some good pub grub. I liked the way it was decorated with old advertising boards.
On a hill overlooking Eyemouth Harbour, there is also a commemorative wall, built in 2017, with each lost man represented by a pebble at the base.
The town’s small museum has more information and displays about the disaster. (These are all fairly terrible pictures because of reflections in the glass cases.) The poster below has a quote from Alex Burgon, Skipper of the Ariel Gazelle – “We’ll not see Eyemoth today boys”. The men clearly knew what was coming. Pickit Men by Emma Mackenzie (2010) has a figure for each of the 129 Eyemouth men lost, standing together in their crews. Pickit is a Scots word meaning plucked. “Ye wad juist think that they had been pickit” was a frequent comment made about the men at the time.
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!
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:
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.
