North Berwick
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NORTH BERWICK, twenty miles east of Edinburgh, has a great deal of charm and a somewhat faded, old-fashioned air, its guest houses and hotels extending along the shore in all their Victorian and Edwardian sobriety. The town's small harbour is set on a headland which cleaves two crescents of sand, providing the town with an attractive coastal setting. The small museum on School Road (April-Oct daily 11am-5pm; free), housed in the old school house, displays local curios including the old town stocks.
Located in an attractively designed new building by the harbour, the Scottish Seabird Centre (daily: April-Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-March 10am-4pm; £4.50) offers an introduction to all types of seabird found around the Scottish coast, particularly the 100,000-plus gannets and puffins which nest on the Bass Rock every summer. Such is the connection between the rock and its annual visitors that the gannet, once known as the solan goose, takes its Latin name, Morus bassana, from the Bass Rock. Thanks to a live link from the centre to cameras mounted on the volcanic island, you're able to view close-up pictures of the birds in their nesting grounds. Elsewhere in the centre, hands-on games and exhibits explain more about different seabirds, and a mock-up of a cliff face has various stuffed birds nesting on it - all of which, the centre insists, were ethically gathered.
Resembling a giant molar, the Bass Rock rises 350ft above the sea some three miles east of North Berwick. This massive chunk of basalt has had an interesting history, having held out as a Jacobite stronghold for six years longer than anywhere else in the country, then served as a prison, a fortress and a monastic retreat. The last lighthouse keepers left in 1988, leaving it, quite literally, to the birds: it's Scotland's second-largest gannet colony after St Kilda but also hosts razorbills, terns, puffins, guillemots and fulmars.
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