At last the wind seems to have moved on, for a while at least, though unfortunately the rain came in mid afternoon catching us mid walk! Today we parked up east of North Berwick at the Drift cafe, a quirky cliff top cafe perched on a headland between Horseshoe and Canty Bay, with fabulous views of Bass Rock – maybe we shall pop in for a cup of tea on the way back, as this cafe comes highly recommended.

For now though we attempt to scramble down a rough path towards Canty Bay. This path turns out to be a bluff and soon makes it’s way back up the cliff to the access road for the few properties lucky enough to be sat on Canty Bay.

From above we can see that the beach is deserted and so I can let Poppydog loose rather than have her drag me all the way down – she can certainly sniff out a beach now from quite a distance!

What a lovely little cove, with a fairly coarse orangey sand that seems to be typical from North Berwick’s East Beach down to Peffy Sands and with mosfly rocky outcrops and pools revealed at low tide on the seaward side if the beach. Even better it is ours for the taking so we do!

After a bit of a play we venture on around the corner where the beach becomes mostly rock and stones with what looks like a little used footpath up the grassy bank to the cliff top and no obvious way around the shoreline. Just to enhance the occasion it starts to rain!

We scramble the 100m or so up the bank and are met with a stone wall leading into a recently combined field – ok now what? Somebody has already removed one of the key stones and Poppydog is easily up and over, so in a much less graceful manner I follow suit! The path ( which may even just be a rabbit run) follows the edge of the field inland, with a pretty impressive view of Tantallon Castle on the way.

Continuing on our way, the ‘path’ brings us out, without further ado past the farm onto the main road. Now we are getting seriously wet, but as we are only a stones throw away from the main entrance to Tantallon Castle we stick with it to see if there is access to the shoreline from the Castle – there isn’t! Instead we make our soggy way back to the car to complete this shortened walk and head for home. A quick glimpse down at the beautiful Horseshoe Bay we so enjoyed yesterday.

Only 3.5 miles but another wonderful beach so who is complaining?

Two thoughts of the day:

We’re all caught up again blogwise which is quite a relief.

Only one more beach to discover and our last in Scotland for the time being – we shall very much look forward to returning and exploring the rest.