Further Along the Coast - Part#1

Last month I posted about a run I did to the coast around Edinburgh. Well the weather has improved so that I can continue my journey east. I only covered about 15 miles of coast but I found enough for two posts.

My first stop is just before Wallyford at the site of the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. Fought in 1547 this was the last pitched battle between Scotland and England (we lost, badly) I don't usually bother about battlefields because, now, they are just fields. Henry VIII wanted an alliance with Scotland and proposed a marriage between his son, Edward, and Mary, Queen of Scots. When the Scots declined Henry started a seven year war. So it was "marry my son or it's war". To make things weirder the couple in question were 9 & 4 years old at the time of the battle.

The SV at Prestonpans

In Prestonpans I found what I hoped was a medieval dungeon but turns out to be a memorial to Scotland's nation poet, Robert Burns.

This is his family motto apparently. Eh, ok. I've never heard of it but "Bield" is a Scots word for house.

10C? that nearly spring in Scotland!

Preston tower house. 15th century. The English had a habit of burning it down over the years.

It is common to find a doocot (dovecote) near a castle or old house. This one has almost 1,000 nests so you'd never be short of meat.

Preston mercat (market) cross. This indicates that the town is allowed to hold a market. After the Reformation the cross was replaced by a symbol, in this case, a unicorn.

This was a coal mining area and this is a memorial to the men that toiled in the pits

 

Another battlefield. The Battle of Prestonpans was the first action of the Jacobite uprising of 1745. Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", was attempting to regain the crown lost by his grandfather, James VII. Charlie took advantage of the absence of most of the British army who were abroad fighting in the War of the Austrian Succession (for some odd reason)

There must still be Jacobites about because there were some fresh flowers at the cairn.

Again the battlefield is now just a ploughed field.

The mural on a wall of the demolished Cockenzie Power Station tells the history of the town.