North Berwick by Train

I was going to head to Stirling today, but then Josef (flatmate) recommended that I go to a small town called North Berwick. He said there was not much to do there, but the scenery is great. So, I walked to the train station and purchased a round trip ticket to North Berwick. Total time to get there was about 25 minutes. The train system is so nice here, very easy to figure out what train to get onto and the time tables are very accurate. It said that the train would depart at 12:37pm, when the train officially left it was 12:37:05pm. Wow, I was impressed, 5 seconds after it was scheduled to leave! They do need to fix that though, a late departure is unacceptable...

When I arrived in North Berwick, I was presented by a small town with a view of the Firth of Forth (body of water). I immediately began walking towards "The Law", a big mountain that is about a 45 minute walk from the train station. Something about the name "The Law" reminded me of that movie "Judge Dredd" with Sylvester Stallone in the early 90's.





The hike to the summit was very nice and not too difficult. The only difficulty was that the grass was wet in some areas, which made it slippery at times. Once I reached the summit, I was greeted by this large whale jawbone. Apparently the original one was ruined so they had to replace it with a fiberglass model. Was still pretty neat looking though. Off in the distance you could see Bass Rock, home to the largest colony of Gannets in Europe. It was absolutely amazing, it looked like a white rock on top, but when I zoomed in on the rock with my lens, I could faintly make out birds flying all around the top. There must have been hundreds of thousands of Gannets on that rock. While I was up there, these flying ants kept attacking me and landing on my camera, backpack, shirt, pants, shoes, etc. Needless to say, I was up there for only 10 minutes.

I then found this walkway that weaved through the forest alongside a stream. Was very nice and quiet to enjoy a nice walk. I then found the beach and there were some pretty cool shells that I found. There were thousands of them, all over. Oh, and the tide must come VERY close to the mainland because about 100 yards from where the water was, the sand was still wet and there were tide pools everywhere! Amazing to think that the tide comes in THAT much! I walked to the top of a ridge and took some nice photos of the beach. I had just a tiny bit of trouble finding the train station from where I was, but this guy confirmed that I was indeed heading in the right direction. I guess I have a natural GPS coordinator built inside my head. Who says you need a TomTom? Heading down to Hewat's tomorrow. It is a store that carries all of the veterinary school supplies for clothing. I will need to buy steel-toed boots, lab coat, waterproof clothing (it doesn't rain here, does it? Do I really need waterproof clothing?), etc. Well, best be going now. Hope everyone is doing well back home and not enjoying that HOT and HUMID weather with the monsoons. I do miss taking pictures of lightning though. It seems like there is never lightning here, just rain. I never hear thunder either. I guess because the air is not as dry, the electricity does not build up in the air as much as it does in the desert. Anyway, talk with you all later and enjoy all of the pictures I took!

North Berwick