A sunny afternoon in Dunbar

[shewhomust]

I started writing this post on a cold rainy day in November: when better to keep that long-ago promise of one more post about our Scottish holiday? That was Sunday and it's now Tuesday, but the principle still holds good. So: on our last day we took a short diversion from the road home to visit Dunbar. I don't know why we'd never been there before: it's not that much further up the coast than Eyemouth, which is somewhere we go from Lindisfarne. We have even passed through Dunbar (on the train: it's on the East Coast main line). But for some reason it had never occurred to me to stop and have a look round, until I saw pictures of the town at the exhibition about the Scottish soldiers marched to Durham as prisoners after the battle of Dunbar (surely I posted about that excibition? but I can't find it, so here's a talk on the subject that we attended instead). The pictures - particularly those of the old harbour - were very inviting, and I looked at a map and realised that this was somewhere we could easily go: I'd been thinking of a day trip, or even a weekend break, and then this year did not turn out as expected...

But the morning after the storm, we set off from Falkirk, and surprisingly soon we were driving along Dunbar's broad main street, looking for somewhere to park, heading straight for the sphinx:

I don't know why there is a sphinx on top of Lauderdalr House: it's a listed building (mansion house, later a barracks, from the office of the Adam brothers) but the detailed information to which I have linked says only "supporting winged sphinx figure". The sphinx is not obliged to explain itself. I thought it was a good omen.

Dunbar was the birthplace of conservationist John Muir, and is rightly proud of it. The house where he was born is a museum (closed during our visit, because of the pandemic), and across the road is his statue, outside the Town House museum (also closed, ditto):

A closer look at that statue:

A number of the shops were closed, too, but I bought some bread from the Community Bakery:

and some pretty things from one of the galleries. We lunched - mostly on ice cream - in the back room of a little café: all the tables in the open were taken, but we weren't crowded, and the door was wide open (and our bill was halved, as we were Eating Out to Help Out, though this was not our intention).

So far, so pleasant historic market town. But all the turnings off one side of the street were steep narrow allwyways, leading down to the sea (this one is Cossar's Wynd):

and the street that runs along the foot of that slope is definitely expressing a seaside spirit:

though there's a different kind of artwork just across the way:

The entry on the Dunbar Art Trail website names the artist as Shona Hardie: I was disappointed to find nothing on her website one half as stylish or distinctive as these magpies. I wish we'd had that Art Trail information to guide us, though: it would have explained some of the things we saw, and pointed us to some things we missed. For example, I was so busy trying and failing to photograph all the nautical decorations here that I did not see the gun at all! But that was later.

We headed down to the Victoria Harbour (I think: Dunbar has two harbours, and the more I look at it, the less certain I am which is which...), past the Barometer and out along the pier:

Here's another view, this time looking from the pier across the harbour:

Beyond the white house is the other, older, harbour, with a handily situated screw propellor for the framing of artistic shots:

and a view across to the ruined castle - "best viewed from a distance" says Undiscovered Scotland.

We were, in any case, out of time. Back to the car, and home: but I don't feel I've exhausted the possibilities of Dunbar ...