With rain showers throughout the night and morning it was jolly nice to see a bit of sunshine for our afternoon stroll. Along the promenade we walked, this time away from Edinburgh to the far reaching sands of Cramond Beach.

With a nice stretch of soft sand, scattered with a few stones and shells leading out to a wide expanse of low tide sand the beach was unsurprisingly quite busy with Saturday afternoon strollers and dog walkers.

The tide is on its way in and had just started to cover the concrete pedestrian causeway out to Cramond Island, so we shall walk out to the Island another day. The Island was a prominent look out during WWII with the concrete defences to stop any enemy boats from sneaking in between the lookout on the Island and the shore, still very evident.

At this point the River Almond cuts across the beach, separating Cramond Beach from the wilder Drum Sands as the Firth of the Forth wends it’s way inland.

As it wasn’t possible to reach Drum Sands we decided to follow the River Almond Walk up stream.

Past the pretty former little hamlet of Cramond.

How beautiful are these wildflowers?

Up past the weir…

Just beyond this point, we did an about turn as the footpath was meandering through woodland and in fact we would both rather be back down on the beach! A very pleasant 5 mile walk and rain free afternoon!

Two thoughts of the day:

Scottish rain is rather wet! Even the seemingly harmless light rain results in a serious soaking!

We are on the flight path for Edinburgh Airport but fortunately they seem to keep rather civilised hours.

A wet night but the morning looked promising (looked, I said!) and was dry, so we set off along the coastal path towards Edinburgh. The tide is still relatively low as we passed Muirhouse Beach.

We didn’t stop for a play as we have a fair walk planned for today. The first mile or so was very pleasant walking along the shoreline backed by grassland but as we approached Granton we were soon trudging our way though semi derelict industrial ground which looks as though it may be in the process of renovation in places though too early to tell! Just beyond Granton Harbour we rejoined the shoreline and the rather unappetising Granton Bay.

We didn’t linger here either! All along the front here are relatively new build tall blocks of flats which either aren’t weathering very well or were not particularly attractive to start with – it does not have a very up and coming feel to it and were we not on a bit if a mission we would have turned back some while ago! We walked around Newhaven Harbour.

Then passed through another area of semi wasteland though I will say there are some pretty talented graffiti artists around – don’t you think?

As we arrived at the Port of Leith the now heavy grey skies started to shed their load and to make our day it was impossible to get a proper look at Royal Britannia as the viewing area was in the middle of a shopping centre which didn’t allow dogs!

We made do with a look through the fence and started to make our soggy way home, catching a passing bus for the last few miles. Not our favourite 7 mile walk but hey you can’t win them all!

Two thoughts of the day:

I do hope those graffiti artists are doing something with their talent.

Why make visitor attractions so inaccessible? I might have been so impressed by what I saw that I would have paid to take a look around!

Well it seems the rain has backed off for a bit, with just a couple of light showers as we were packing up we were away in the dry by 11am. The journey of 85 miles, one of our longest so far, was also one of the busiest, driving through Glasgow (albeit via the M8) and into the outskirts of Edinburgh, but we did it without a hitch, even following the CAMC directions written on a post-it, rather than trusting the Sat Nav! The sun was shining on our arrival and we were soon settled on our pitch.

The beauty of this site, aside from it being on the edge of Edinburgh is that the shore is a short 10 minute walk away – so off we went. Now the tide was in so there was only a little strip of beach exposed, part sand and stone.

Enough beach for us to have a little play and for Poppydog to expend a bit of energy! We are looking forward to seeing the beach when the tide is out, as it promises to be a large area of sand.

There is a wide walkway / cycle path backed by open grassland (some sections mown and others left to run wild) which we shall explore during our stay here.

With views across the Forth to the coast of Fife, we are keen and excited to continue our journey.