Shore point: Once a choice destination for holidaymakers, Portobello now rankles at its apparent neglect

SCOTTISH summer weather being what it is, a trip to the beach, even in July, is very often an act of faith.

What's cheering is that there are still so many true believers. A good place to find these sand-worshippers - let's not be so daft as to call them sun-worshippers - is Portobello in Edinburgh.

Of course, though I say in Edinburgh, the truth is that most residents of Portybelly, as it is fondly known, consider themselves quite separate from the city up the hill, and would choke on their salt?'n'?sauced chips at being described as mere suburbanites. Porty is, quite simply, a place in its own right. And the crucial reason for its feeling of separateness is, surely, the beach. Edinburgh, with its parliament, is at the centre of Scottish life; Portobello, being on the coast, feels a bit out there on the edge. Early on a Friday, that is a very pleasant place to be.

At a little after seven, it has been light for two hours. The sky is pale blue and pale gold, the same colours as Portobello's coat-of-arms. Walking along Bath Street, past Scotmid and the Spiritualist Church, the waves are just a whispered rumour. But suddenly the street ends and the beach is right there - the Firth of Forth, too big to take in all at once, brilliant with reflected sunlight.

It's getting on for high tide. Standing at the line of the waves, moving his arms in prayerful circles, is Harald, a 64-year-old German with longish grey hair. Resident in Portobello since 1998, he comes here in the early mornings to practise a personalised mix of yoga, gymnastics and the Chinese breathing exercises Qigong. "For me, this is a spiritual place," he explains. "The clear light, the wind. It's a soul thing. I focus on the moment and prepare for the day ahead. Actually, I am returning to Germany later today. My mother-in-law is gravely ill. So I have come to say goodbye to the beach."

I have come to say hello to it. And it is easy to accept Harald's idea of Porty beach as spiritual, especially at this time of day when there is hardly anyone around. It is certainly beautiful. The sky is gigantic and mackerel-striped with cloud. Across the water to the west are the twin peaks of the Lomond Hills, known as the Paps of Fife; scan eastwards and you come first to the dark fin of North Berwick Law and then the silhouetted mass of East Lothian. A tanker sits on the horizon like a thickly inked hyphen.

The beach, at this hour, is barely disturbed by human footprints, its surface a mixed-media abstract of worm-casts and kelp, bruise-coloured mussel shells and the arrow-like tracks of oystercatchers.

Starting at 6.15 each morning, the sand is cleaned by a tractor pulling a spiked rake; around ten tons of rubbish will be removed during the course of the day. Jim, one of the council workers responsible for this, has short, silver hair and thick, bronzed arms. He's been doing the job for 32 years and takes a great deal of pride and care over his work. The last thing he wants is a child getting cut on broken glass. He also knows, from long experience, that a strong north-easterly means he'll be picking up lots of dead birds which have become fatally tangled in seaweed churned up to the surface by the wind. Removing animals washed ashore is one of the less pleasant aspects of the work. He's seen it all. "Oh, aye. Dolphins, a shark once, dogs, deer, sheep, a donkey."

Up the beach a bit, Greig Getty is scanning the sands with his metal detector. Greig is 44, a big burly guy in a Metallica T-shirt. He has a couple of days off work. Yesterday he was on the beach at North Queensferry; tomorrow it'll be St Andrews. Today is Portobello, where he hopes to discover jewellery dropped by visitors during the resort's Victorian heyday. "But this is what you tend to get," he says, pulling a handful of finds from a pocket. "Bottle tops, ring pulls and a few pound coins, which we call chubbies."

Between seven and eight is the hour of the dog-walker. Actually, you'll find people exercising their pets here at any time from noon to midnight and back again. But between seven and eight all you can hear is the skittering, skiting beat of dogs running on wet sand in pursuit of a tennis ball or favourite stick; it is a sound not unlike a touch typist working at top speed.

Three elderly friends - Cathy Wishart, Rhoda Glanville and Doris Hannigan - are strolling along the prom with their dogs; Max is a golden lab, Belle is a collie-lab cross, and Hugo is a cairn terrier with a piratical air. Each member of the party, dogs and owners, wears an expression of perfect contentment. They are here every day at this time. Wouldn't miss it.

"You get the best of the morning. It makes your day," says Doris.

"I remember we walked along here in all that snow," says Cathy.

"Who wants to go abroad on holiday when you've got Portobello beach?" Rhoda asks.

It is an excellent question. Portobello, like much of the British seaside, has suffered greatly for the rise of the package holiday. By the late 18th century it was the favourite resort of Edinburgh's middle-classes. By the second half of the 19th, railways and trams were bringing the working-classes in their tens of thousands. But in recent decades it has been a story of decline. So much of the holiday infrastructure is gone. Locals can show you where the pier used to be. They can point to the site of the open-air swimming pool where Sean Connery worked as a lifeguard. A bus depot now stands where the Marine Gardens once stood; this pleasure complex, opened in 1909 and demolished in 1966, was in its early years home to 70 Somalis said to have entertained visitors by pretending to fight with spears.

There is - one might say thankfully - no such entertainment in Portobello now. And it takes a real heatwave for the beach to reach its peak. The rather mournful sign above the exit in one of the amusement arcades - "Haste Ye Back" - might well be addressed at all those crowds who thronged the prom many years ago. It goes unobserved, anyway, by the grannies shoving chubbies in the puggies.

What is most surprising about the lack of people is the fact that the beach is only three miles away from the centre of Scotland's second biggest city, a city enormously popular with tourists. Many locals believe that the council do not do nearly enough to promote Portobello to visitors. There are dark mutterings about foreigners spending a week in the city and returning home without having any idea that the beach even exists. Many Edinburgh residents, too, seem to have a blind spot about Portobello, which is very odd. If Glasgow had a beach, you wouldn't be able to see the sand for tartan rugs and weans eating Scotch eggs. In an attempt to raise its profile, a mass picnic at the beach is planned for today - Sunday - between 3pm and 6pm.

I must say, though, that I like it a great deal as it is - neither too busy nor too developed. I like the shriek of gulls and the kids denied ice-cream. I like the smell of hot dogs and wet dogs. I like the Brazilian tourists who say, charitably, "Portobello, Rio, they are almost the same," and I like the wee girl in a hijab playing cricket.

Out in the dark water, surprisingly far out, four teenage girls are swimming, despite the cold, in bikinis; denial is an effective form of insulation. It must stay shallow for a long way - three perform handstands, their legs defiant Vs against the slate sky, while the fourth takes pictures on her phone. They were bored so caught the bus from Morningside - "it took, like, an hour" - and here they are with tingling skin and salt water matting their hair, young and alive.

It takes about 45 minutes to walk at high tide from the beach's western edge to the Joppa rocks in the east. It is a journey soundtracked by the music of Andreas Rosinski, a portly Polish busker, whose presence here is as familiar and expected as the view of Cockenzie power station. He sits for hours on a bench on the prom and performs on his Weltmeister accordion the Blue Danube and other jaunty European pieces. The music swells and recedes as one walks, swirled by the wind, tidal almost. It goes very well with the charcoal smudge of rain moving in from the sea and the sudden shafts of sun which pick out Inchkeith island.

Ian Rhodes, in his late fifties, is walking along the prom with partner Ann. Though he now lives in Edinburgh, he is from Lanarkshire, and says his family have been holidaying here since 1945. He has been visiting since childhood. He and Ann have their flask, pieces, picnic blanket and each other's company. Everything they need for a couple of hours at the seaside.

Squinting blithely at the sky, Ian sums up the attitude of all those who love this place. "Even though it's overcast," he grins, "it's still Portybelly."