Family: With lots of paths, rock pools and birdlife, Tyninghame Beach is great to explore

Two things struck me as unusual when I woke up one Sunday in July. First, the sun was peeking through the curtains and secondly, there was only one of my offspring in the house. Forsaking the pile of Sunday papers awaiting my attention, I took the rash decision that we should head for the coast.

Daniel the Spaniel was, of course, ready from the off, but it took a bit of nagging and a sausage sandwich to get 16-year-old Bill out of his scratcher.

We thought we’d try somewhere different, away from the madding crowds and I remembered Tyninghame, where I had gone to a riotous party a few years back. Even though the beach road is unmarked (first right on the road out of the village towards North Berwick) there was a small sign saying “wedding”. This had probably taken place the night before at the beach 
house area.

There is, quite surprisingly, a proper car park here – pretty packed on this occasion with the stay-over revellers and other walkers who had the same idea as us. We took the fork right towards the beach, about 1km from the car. 
On the way we passed other 
families and a couple out walking their cats, which Dan found very amusing. Where we emerged, the beach is not a sandy one, but great for hopping from stone to stone and there weren’t very many people there at all. Dan and Bill were leaping about like mountain goats, whereas I was going a bit more carefully, trying not to fall into the 
rock pools.

At the far end, some steps took us to a point through almost waist-high grass where, over the jaggy, craggy rocks, we watched hundreds of gannets from Bass Rock diving into the water for fish.

There was a large seat made out of carved stone which was already taken. Over to the left we saw the beach by the lodge, but as I’d not worked out the best way to get there, we took another track. The woods here reminded me of Where The Wild Things Are, but I don’t think I ever read that to Bill so I didn’t embarrass myself by bringing it up.

Just over an hour after starting out we were back at the car, but we could have stayed much longer as there are so many paths around here. Next time we’ll take a picnic and spend more time watching 
the birds.

• Tyninghame Beach is located off the A198 from Tyninghame to North Berwick.