Friday 16th June 2023

After three weeks off after our North East England trip due to my birthday and other things, we were at Ayr Craigie Gardens a couple of weeks ago, but it was hot and I didn’t take any notes, other than that you want to be near the toilet blocks and facing away from them if you want to get the most sun, otherwise it might be a bit chilly in the evenings.

We set off in the early evening, and again, out along the M8 and then onto the A1, towards North Berwick, we had been here last year when visiting East Fortune and vowed to come back, so…it was on our list of places to visit this year, it took around 1hr45 minutes, traffic was a bit hectic around Edinburgh, but once we got onto the A1 it was pretty smooth.

The site is owned by the same folks who own Belhaven Bay which we were at earlier this year, and it was a very similar setup.

We pulled in, and parked with our nose facing away from the water, for the first time since we got the van, we were level! (yes, the pitch has that much of a slope), the “door test”, which is basically, if we open the door, will it sit without closing, passed first time, a first for everything.

We were on Pitch 69, which isn’t great, as the dog walking path is right behind, so there’s a steady stream of folks wandering through the pitch.

First thing was to take a wander around the site, some nice facilities and a very clean site.

We grabbed lollies from the wee shop then set off down towards North Berwick, when we were in the town last year, we had looked up from the beach towards this site, and it’s a nice easy walk down the hill into the town, we didn’t go quite as far, but sat enjoying the evening sun at the top of the hill for a bit, beautiful location, even if there were a lot of vans parked up for the night in the car park.

Back to the van, and out with the Cadac, due to the heat, I had taken advantage of the cool morning to prep some chicken, peppers and onions and seasoning in a bag to make fajitas with, so dinner was quite easy, tip the bag out into the big pan in the Cadac, Gayle produced some ice-cold sangria and I got on with dinner, it was so windy that the gas was struggling, so, I picked the pan up and put it on the van burners which have better wind protection (we can close over the door a lot) and dinner was served, pockets toasted on the Cadac looked great and dinner was tasty!

At one point during the dinner cooking we were treated to a lone piper from a nearby van.

We sat out until it was too cool, we have had very warm temperatures in Glasgow for several weeks, and we knew that we were heading east to cooler temps (around 8C lower!) but didn’t think it’d be quite as cool, I didn’t bring a fleece, and Gayle was getting chilly even with her shawl, so…around 9pm we went inside, one nice thing about the Firth of Forth, and breezy weather, no fear of midges!

Ayr Craigie was the first use of a new Panda mattress topper, but the jury’s still out, it’s heavy to move around, and the memory foam is “weird” to move around on, is it helping with sleeping? maybe…

We were up early on Saturday morning, and wandered into North Berwick via the beach, it was a beautiful morning, and we had breakfast from the Bostock bakery again, I had the savoury brioche with chorizo, and Gayle had without, very tastyy, and an almost croissant as a follow up while Gayle had a sweet brioche, definitely worth a visit, and the coffee’s pretty good too.

We spent the day wandering around the town, and sitting around the beach before visiting the “Coastal Communities Museum” which is definitely worth going to, it’s very close to the seafront, and covers the history of the towns along this part of the East Lothian coast, one of my favourite things was the amount of material to read, rather than just pictures or exhibits, there’s a lot of interesting material explaining the history, definitely worth a visit, I think we were there for around an hour.

Back to the van for a wee bit of rest after picking up some breakfast essentials, and we sat outside, it was definitely a bit chillier than we expected.

We relaxed for a bit, then headed into town for food, North Berwick was busy, and we ended up in a wee Cantonese restaurant for some food and a beer, it was fine.

Back to the van, watched a bit of TV and passed out after making up the bed.

We were up late on Sunday morning (well, by my standards).

I sparked up the grill to cook up a breakfast pack, it was a beautiful morning, we sat reading and relaxing ’til it was time to pack up and head home, the forecast was the the weather to change, so we were glad to be heading home.