Montrose

"Here's the Basin, there's Montrose, shut your een and haud your nose." As the old rhyme indicates, MONTROSE, a seaport and market town since the thirteenth century, can sometimes smell a little rich, mostly because of its position on the edge of a virtually landlocked two-mile-square lagoon of mud known as the Basin. On the south side of the Basin, a mile out of Montrose along the A92, the Montrose Basin Wildlife Centre (redevelopment is planned during 2002; call 01674/676336 to confirm opening times and admission charges; previously daily 10.30am-5pm, Nov-March closes 4pm) has binoculars, high-powered telescopes, bird hides and remote-control video cameras. In addition, the centre's resident ranger leads regular guided walks around the reserve.

Montrose locals are known as "Gable Endies", because of the unusual way in which the town's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century merchants, influenced by architectural styles they had seen on the continent, built their houses gable-end to the street. The few remaining original gabled houses line the wide High Street, off which are numerous tiny alleyways and quiet courtyards.

Two blocks behind the soaring kirk steeple at the lower end of High Street, the Montrose Museum and Art Gallery (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; free) in Panmure Place on the western side of Mid Links park, is one of Scotland's oldest museums, dating from 1842. For a small-town museum, it has some particularly unusual exhibits, among them the so-called Samson Stone, a Pictish relic dating from 900 AD bearing a carving of Samson slaying the Philistines. In the local history section, look out for the mechanical paper sculpture of the town of Montrose, with a green train running along the top and yachts sailing by.

Outside the museum entrance stands a winsome study of a boy by local sculptor William Lamb (1893-1951). More of his work can be seen in the moving William Lamb Memorial Studio on Market Street (July to mid-Sept daily 2-5pm; at other times, ask at the museum; free), including bronze heads of the Queen, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother. Finally, don't ignore the town's fabulous golden seashore. The beach road, Marine Avenue, across from the town museum, heads down through sand dunes and golf links to car parks fringing the fine, wide beach overlooked by a slender white lighthouse.

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