The first day of meteorological spring started cold, clear, bright and sunny, so we decided to take the bikes to Haddington and ride some new roads. We have done Haddington to Dunbar before, but the return trip was simply the reverse of the outward one. This time I looked up a nice circular route on the computer, but our East Lothian Spokes map has gone missing so I had to scribble down some brief directions to save us from getting lost when we tried it out for real (more of that later).
We parked in Haddington and joined cycle route 76 taking us over the river and out the southeast end of Haddington. We parted from route 76 by taking a right turn and along a more hilly route which took us to the south side of Traprain Law. The ride alongside the massive rock outcrop was beautiful, and spring was certainly in the air, with the first sight of occasional oilseed rape flowers coming into bloom in the south facing fields.
Approach to Traprain Law
The scrap of paper with directions served me well until we shot past a left turn that I had forgotten to write down. As a result, we had to climb a stiff hill past a smelly pig farm, leading to a T-junction. The signpost said Dunbar left, but my bit of paper said we should go right. There are lots of roads criss-crossing through East Lothian and there must surely be more than one way to get to Dunbar. So right we went…
After a while, Colette commented that Traprain Law had reappeared on our right, and didn’t that mean we were going the wrong way? I was trying to ignore it, but there was no denying that we were now headed in the complete opposite direction to our destination. So we retraced our steps and headed for Dunbar according to the road signs.
After going through Stenton (which was not on the original planned route, and thus confused me greatly), we had a lovely freewheel ride down to where the road met the busy A1 at a roundabout. Here my pre-planning came good again, as we went straight across and took an exit that seemed to lead to a commercial unit. However, a concrete road skirted past it and joined up with West Barns. We then turned right and rode into Dunbar a little later than planned.
After picking up a couple of packets of chips, we headed down to the harbour to eat them. The drawbridge was up, preventing us from going to the far side, so we just parked ourselves alongside Fisher Lassie and got out our lunch. Colette however was distracted by the sight of dozens of eider ducks in the harbour, diving and coming up with what looked like little fish in their beaks. The gulls were mobbing them to get a slice of the action, but the ducks managed to keep their food for themselves.
Eider ducks
Chuck me a fish please!
There were also a couple of grey seals cruising around the harbour, which distracted Colette further from eating her chips. In fact, I finished mine and took some of hers while waiting, which I regretted as soon as I stood up. After struggling to locate a rubbish bin (there were loads of dog poo bins) I finally got shot of the chip leftovers and we started the return journey.
The sun had gone in temporarily and we were feeling quite cold after cooling down during lunch. The wind, light though it was, was against us on the return leg, so the effort warmed us up again. After a while we were passing Traprain Law again from the other side. We paused a while to admire the brave paragliders who were soaring in the breeze / thermals off the western cliff. I can’t imagine how anyone is able to throw themself off the cliff hoping that the parachute thing will do its job rather than just crumpling up and sending them plummeting to a rocky fate!
Just hangin’ at Traprain Law
We arrived back at the car feeling tired but actually glad of the extra few miles diversion, as it took the distance to just over 30 miles. The most wonderful thing of all was the lack of mud on us and the bikes. It is great to cycle somewhere that isn’t caked in gloopy mud, courtesy of the Borders Railway Project – we must do more away trips!