Discovering Albion – day 7: The Water of Leith

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We left Montrose after no more than the visit to the pub. We may regret that, of course, having been led there pretty much by accident, but we were not aware of any particular reason for being there … other than the pub… time was getting on and the church looked closed for the day. And anyway, we were both disappointed at not making it as far as Boddam after all… and dinner was a long drive away. Nor had we any idea where we might be going to stay that night. We would see where we ended up.

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The snow ceased and the hawks returned almost as soon as we left Montrose, so we were pretty sure we had made the right choice. Taking the coast road for a while through Arbroath to Dundee the sky softened to pastel and dinner or not, we had to stop. Just so I could take the odd picture of the changing light…

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We crossed the Tay for the second time that afternoon then slipped, just for once, onto a slightly faster road and headed south towards Edinburgh. Both Stuart and I have friends in Leith, a district of the city that sits on the southern bank of the Forth of Firth so we decided to head that way in search of somewhere to eat… and left a message to see if one of our friends was free to join us.

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Of course, we had to find the Quays first… the bit my companion remembered where he knew we would also find dinner. This proved a little problematic, but after all, you can only go so far when one part of the town meets the water. Finding the place we needed, we set off to walk beside the Water of Leith where the old port buildings and pubs have been given a facelift.

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My companion sought a source of stout while I took a few opportunistic photos. We finally settled on the Kings Wark, on the waterfront… and old building with walls thick enough to withstand pretty much anything. Guinness and orange juice being duly provided… there are downsides to being the driver… we finally settled down to await a perfect meal of fish and chips…

“Happy Birthday,” I said… for yes, it was his birthday.
He raised his glass.
I raised my camera. It was a fair exchange.

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Sadly our friend was not able to join us, so we went back to where we’d parked the car.. then I decided I needed to get a photo of the lights on the water. We walked to the end of the street and had the gift of a long-legged young fox unconcernedly walking right by us. I snapped… and got a mere ghost of two of the creature against the lights of the cars… but it was enough for us.

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Musselburgh… there used to be a hotel… though given my luck so far they’d probably demolished it. It certainly wasn’t where it used to be. We’d go on to Prestonpans… Nothing. We stopped at the Wemyss Hotel in Longniddry… they had no rooms but kindly recommended a B&B. We tried another on the way… but both were full. In January?

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“You could try Aberlady…” said the woman at the last of the two. It was late… we discussed parking by the beach and using the duvet I’d packed…But we’d try Aberlady first. It was on our way… and not far until we saw a hotel. But of course, I had shot past it in the dark and had to find somewhere to turn round. Pulling into a side street we passed another, simpler place… we decided to try there first.

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The Old Aberlady Inn is a proper old Inn, sympathetically modernised and with roaring fires. We were greeted with warmth and smiles and escorted to comfort. There was everything we could need, even chocolates and little flasks of sherry with proper glasses in the rooms…Which was perfect and proved itself to be the water of Lethe. Before bed, however, I wandered down to the car to get something and caught sight of an information board about the village… Wandering over to have a look, I thought we might just have to explore a little before we left. Apparently, there was an old market cross near the church…And thus ended the sixth day… and I can’t believe it has taken me 15 posts to write about one day! How did we manage to fit it all in?!

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