Tag Archives: coastal

The Clyde Coast

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Wemyss Bay Station 018

Dad and I went off down the Clyde coast over the holiday weekend, with glorious spring sunshine sparkling on the Firth of Clyde as we drove alongside. We visited the beautiful old station at Wemyss Bay, often counted as one of the ten most beautiful railway station in the British Isles. The old steel and glass canopy let the light flood into the station:

Wemyss Bay Station 01

The canopies above the platforms have a gentle curve to them, which coupled with perspective and the natural light coming in makes them a popular subject for many Scottish photographers:

Wemyss Bay Station 09

Wemyss Bay Station 014

The station was built to connect a railway spur to the Glasgow line to the coast and the steam ships plying the waters of the Firth of Forth, and the station still has a working dock for ferries to the islands, with this handsome wooden and glass sloping (and again slightly curved) walkway to take pedestrians from the station down to the berthed ferries:

Wemyss Bay Station 06

And talking of which, here’s one of the ferries, the Bute, coming into dock:

Wemyss Bay Station 019

Wemyss Bay Station 022

Wemyss Bay Station 024

Wemyss Bay Station 025

And on the way back up the coast we passed the beautiful Cloch Point Lighthouse, built in 1797 by Thomas Smith and his son in law Robert Stevenson, part of that great generational family of engineers, the Lighthouse Stevensons, whose line would also one day produce one of Scotland’s greatest writers, Robert Louis Stevenson, and whose remarkable feats of engineering still mark our coastline today and still protect mariners.

Cloch Point Lighthouse 01

Cloch Point Lighthouse 04

Cloch Point Lighthouse 05

Stormy weather…

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Down at Portobello this afternoon, grey, windy, stormy, high tide being pushed even more by the wind, causing the waves to smash into the sea wall with mighty booms, like roaring thunder…

crashing waves 01

And then often hitting the sea wall with such energy it was forced up and along, fountaining upwards to rise up and over then splash down onto the promenade

crashing waves 02

crashing waves 03

While people were enjoying watching it splash up and over, although they would then dart backwards with delighted shrieks

crashing waves 05

Naturally I used the bigger zoom on my new camera to take these – I wasn’t getting that close!!

crashing waves 06

Low tide

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Musselburgh harbour at very low tide – looks almost like you could walk out off the beach and right into the harbour mouth – I don’t recommend it, tried that once at low tide, but the sand near the entrance becomes increasingly ‘sinky’ and unwilling to tolerate the weight of any creature heavier than a mudlarking bird

Musselburgh Harbour, low tide 01

I’ve understood how the tides work since I was a boy reading my astronomy books, but even now as an adult I still find it a little bit magical that somewhere like a harbour can become absolutely empty of water, the boats left on the mud, high and dry, tilted over on their keels, awaiting the return of the water to float them again and make them useful.

Musselburgh Harbour, low tide 06

Chap sitting by the sea wall looking out, while the harbour mouth awaits the salty kiss of the returning tide…

Musselburgh Harbour, low tide 07

Meanwhile nature makes good use of the changing conditions tidal spaces bring each day (twice), with birds probing at the wet sand in the harbour floor with their specially adapted long beaks, looking for supper. Odd to see them walking pass the bottom of the hulls of boats knowing that in just a few hours this will all again be submerged, the floor hidden and the boats bobbing up and down on the water. The birds had colouring on their feathers that made them blend in very well with their surroundings, had to wait for them to walk near a small muddy pool to try and get some contrast to make them stand out even this little amount:

Musselburgh Harbour, low tide 09

All the fun of the fair

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Nice, sunny afternoon, pal decided to get the hood down on his old MG and go for a run up the coast, we ended up in Burntisland in Fife for a short stop, wandered through the wee funfair, sudden rush of childhood memories – if we came back this way when I was a kid my mum and dad couldn’t get past here without me spotting it and a stop off would normally ensue. Nothing huge at it, but when you’re six it’s fun!:

Burnt Island funfair 01

Burnt Island funfair 02

From a distance we thought this was a helter-skelter, but when we got closer we realised it wasn’t a slide spiralling down the tower, it was a track and wee cars ran down it. How the heck did they get up to the top though? We watched and it turned out the cars went right up inside the tower – kids get in them, it enters then flips up so it is sitting on it’s backside and goes up vertically with the passengers lying on their back, then at the top it emerges, flips back to horizontal and starts its spiral downwards, looked fun.

Burnt Island funfair 03

Burnt Island funfair 04

and here’s a short video of the ride in action:

Setting sun, furling sail…

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The sun is declining in the sky, time to ship oars, furl sails for another day, make all ship-shape and Bristol fashion
setting sun, furling the sail
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that the tide may be out at this point… You can actually walk down the steps right into the wee harbour floor at North Berwick during low tide, although I don’t recommend stepping out much further than the base of the stairs as the muddy sand is rather sinky.
North Berwick Harbour 4