Given the cuts situation, and the fact I've spent the day on the couch unable to move, I have a post on disability brewing. However, while it percolates gently, I'm going to post the rest of the pictures from our exploration of Seacliff. I'd better get it done before they're a whole year out of date (the pics were taken in March of last year)!
So, when
we last left our delightful (ahem) heroine (yours truly) and her
parents trusty sidekicks, they'd just discovered a hidden harbour that's only accessible from the mainland at low tide. The harbour comes complete with slipway, channel, and a box for keeping live catch in until they were needed for the table. After exploring the harbour, we headed back to the beach. I said in my last post that Seacliff is like something out of an Enid Blyton book; as well as secret harbours and ruins, there are also stories of wreckers. Just beyond the rocks on which St Baldred's cross sits, there are two rocky outcrops, known as the Scoughall Rocks and the Car Rocks. Stories say that the Pagans of Scoughall used to use lights to lure ships onto the rocks, where they would be wrecked, and the cargo plundered. In bad weather, it would have been easy for people on that part of the coast to show lights pretending to be the lighthouses on Bass Rock and Fidra, which ships heading up the Forth would have been looking out for.
Robert Louis Stevenson was related to the Dale family, descendents of the family who owned Seacliff. Supposedly his book
The Wreckers is based on stories he heard about the wreckers in this area.
Standing next to the stream that runs across the beach, looking down the coast and out to the North Sea.
The ruins of Auldhame are very conspicuous at this end of the beach.
There's another mysterious ruin to be explored. Warning; if you're on a slow connection, there are quite a lot of pictures:
