It is managed by East Lothian Council and, I am very proud to say, my friend John! I'm not so proud to say that in all the time I lived in Scotland I never once went along to the reserve. It was, admittedly, a long way from where I used to stay but that's no excuse. I have now made up for past failings however, and paid a visit to the reserve on Tuesday before I continued south back across the border and into England.
I didn't get to see my pal, but I did leave a not very cryptic hello for him on the sightings sheet before I left! I was going to leave a note that I'd spotted a plastic bag on the reserve but thought I'd better not in the end. There is a story attached to that and John will know what I mean, but if anyone else reads the sightings sheet then they'd think I was being facetious and cross it out!!
Mr H and myself were both at university in Aberdeen together... crikey, just realised that it was last century, lol, and we shared a flat as well as a love of all things ornithological. John was far more knowledgeable than me (and obviously still is) as I only joined the University Bird Club as a way of getting across Scotland and seeing the place. I quickly caught the bug for birding though, and have many smashing memories of many smashing trips!!
My trip to Aberlady was tinged with sadness however. I was feeling really blue for having had to leave the dog in Scotland. He was never mine to keep, but to give him back hurt like hell and is still hurting now. So it was with a heavy heart that I actually set off across the wooden bridge and as the Scottish author Nigel Tranter put it, into 'Enchantment'.
As it turns out, dogs aren't allowed on the reserve between April and July anyway, so I could amble about and not keep thinking 'Hogy would have loved it here' and other such mournful thoughts. He would have loved it there, I've no doubt, but at least the knowledge that I couldn't have taken him if I'd had him made it easier to walk and look ahead to life without him. Not much easier, but a bit easier. By the time I'd returned to the car, my heart felt a bit lighter and I did start to feel a lot better... 'Enchantment' indeed!!
Covering 582 hectares (which is 1,439 acres for those of us who still work in old money), Aberlady is a stunning mix of tidal sand, mud flats, dune systems, pioneer salt marsh, and also has the wee Marl Loch
as well as the Peffer Burn and its estuarine landscape. With a backdrop of industrial Edinburgh to the west,
and the golf course to the east, Aberlady local nature reserve manages to squeeze rare and splendid isolation into a modern age of bustle and business. From the moment you cross the bridge, the noise of the road and the 21st century slowly dissipates into a new world of rustling grasses, birdsong, crickets and, eventually, the lapping of waves on the shore.
The footpath winds its way through the marshes and you are accompanied along the way by hundreds of butterflies flitting along from flower to flower and leaf to leaf.
There are 15 different species of butterfly here, and they flutter alongside the path as if you're walking into a Disney film!! To add to the slightly fairytale feel, the path then leads you through a tunnel of sea buckthorn that is cut in such a way you could be walking into a set for a Lord of the Rings movie or something!
Once through the tunnel, all sounds of the road have disappeared and you're in a truly magical place. The wildflowers are absolutely stunning, the diversity is wonderful and is clearly appreciated by the number of different birds that sing and chirrup as you walk by.
The walk up to the beach at Gullane Point is roughly one and a half miles, and if you go in the middle of the day in the middle of summer as I did, make sure you have plenty of high factor sunscreen with you!! I couldn't reach my back to put on the factor 30 and came back looking like I'd laid down in a blast furnace for half an hour!!!
Popping over the top of the dunes to the beach pops you back into the 21st century again, but there are still reminders of the past even here!
Fences stick out of dunes where the wind blown sand is reclaiming its lands, and out on the beach at low tide is an even stranger reminder of days gone by... a submarine being reclaimed by the sea!
A submarine in death as it was in its life!! I was fascinated by the different shapes and stood for a while thinking about how small it looked and how it must have been to have worked on her, when I realised that the water was creeping back in and was taking her back for another few hours until releasing her again at the next low tide. I stopped a while longer just to get a shot as low to the water as I could... I'd already got my backside wet when I squatted down for an earlier photo (which is how I noticed that the tide was coming in, lol), so I sat right down in the water for this one!
The things I do to bring you a photo!!! Getting a wet bottom in the pursuit of photography is one thing, walking back across the sands in wet trousers is another thing altogether! The beach here has a few posts and pillars scattered about,
but eventually I found a lovely big bleached driftwood log to sit on while I hung my wet trousers up on a post to dry.
It didn't take long, and I soon returned back the way that I came and back into real life again... and just as if to emphasise the end to my few hours in enchantment, a toad crossed in front of me under the buckthorn tunnel on his way to Marl Loch.
A fitting end to a few hours in fairyland!! If you happen to be in the area, look out for the bridge across to the reserve and let your dreams take you somewhere else for a while...
Nigel Tranter called it the 'Footbridge to Enchantment', it is!!
Read more about the reserve here and put a wee circle round it on your road map, it's a very special little place. http://www.aberlady.org/Nature%20reserve.html
Rebecca, x
http://www.rtphotographics.co.uk/
rebecca@rtphotographics.co.uk
