As promised, some more photos and details about our little family trip over to the East Coast. We stayed in Leith and spent most time around the Firth of Forth with a day in Aberdour.
Maid of the Forth Boat Tour
Anyone who reads my family travel posts knows we love a boat trip and this time we went on the Maid of the Forth which does a tour of all three Forth bridges and Inchcolm island. The Forth Rail Bridge (the red one, above) is extremely famous in Scotland and something of an engineering marvel. While I’ve been over it on a train dozens of times, this must have been the first time I’ve seen it up close, which was very cool.
The other 2 are road bridges (looks up names, grudgingly) – the new Queensferry Crossing (bottom right), and the old Forth Road Bridge (top left – now just for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport). They are both boring. We drove over the new bridge later and you can’t even see the rail bridge from it, which was the only good thing about the old bridge. Terrible priorities there.
Inchcolm
Not only do you get to sail around the island of Inchcolm but you get dropped off to explore. It initially felt like a very long time for such a small island but the time went surprisingly fast. The ruined abbey is the main attraction and very picturesque with great views from all around. You can go up the square tower but the stone spiral stairs were pitch black, extremely narrow and very worn so I decided not to.
Being Scotland in September, we had all the weather but managed a picnic and then a walk up a steep hill to see some abandoned WW2 stuff, which was well worth it for the views. There’s also a little museum and shop so I definitely recommend it. It was actually quite busy when we arrived but the boats have staggered timings so everyone already there will leave before you.
Aberdour Castle & Beach
Since this was Nicolette’s belated birthday trip, we went with her idea of Apple Day at Aberdour Castle, which was so much better than I expected, especially due to the amazing weather. When we arrived, they were pressing apples from the orchard into apple juice and we had a small cup. But then they just kept on making more and more so I think we had about four cups each in the end. It was very good! They also provided blankets so you could sit down and enjoy your juice.
There was also an apple tasting and you could help yourself to apples in the orchard as welI. I took home one small Laxton’s Fortune apple and cooked it with some cinnamon and butter to add to my porridge. I wish I’d taken more. The gardens were lovely too, and the castle was fairly interesting.
Aberdour looked like it had a lot of nice independent shops and cafes but we had lunch at the beach cafe instead. You wouldn’t want to go for a paddle but it was nice to pretend summer wasn’t pretty much over. That is also the Firth of Forth and Edinburgh’s skyline was really clear in the distance.
We had some good meals in Leith as well but didn’t really get around much, and I didn’t even have a look around the shops in Edinburgh. Another time.
