John Muir Way: Prestonpans to North Berwick

Friday 29th August 2025

To do my next stage of the John Muir Way I first needed to get back to Prestonpans, which meant catching a train from Edinburgh, where I was staying, and I almost missed it! The trains were every hour so I would have had a long wait for the next one and with sensational weather I didn’t want to waste any more time than I needed to. Fortunately I caught the train and got off at Prestonpans station where I made my way back through the village to the coast and rejoined the John Muir Way. I soon had amazing views across the Firth of Forth, which from my perspective looked like a large landlocked lake because I couldn’t see the mouth of the estuary. It was a stunning sight stretching back to the Pentland Hills in the distance behind me with Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, and moving clockwise around the view I came to the Forth Bridges and then along the Fife Coast, which I walked in 2021, and then at some point my view across the Firth of Forth merged with the East Lothian coast, which I would be following this day under blue skies and great sunshine. Soon, however, I was forced away from the route of the John Muir Way by construction work to walk beside the road until I reached Cockenzie Harbour. My progressed then continued past the unified coastal towns of Cockenzie and Port Seton until I reached Seton Sands where I couldn’t resist the temptation to drop down onto the beach and have a wonderfully relaxing walk with extensive views across the sand under the clear blue skies. I went into this holiday feeling very tired due to stress and it had succeeded in releasing those stresses from my body and helping me to relax. This walk across the sands was another part of that prescription.

The view was mesmerising and I couldn’t help taking picture after picture of the awesome sight that was reminiscent of the views I had seen four years ago while walking the Fife Coastal Path, just the other side of the estuary. When rocks began to appear I climbed up onto the dunes and followed a course between the beach and the road, which later became wooded until finally I returned to the road to head into the village of Aberlady. On the other side I emerged to an extensive view across Aberlady Bay where I decided to stop and have my lunch before setting off again, however, from this point the John Muir Way keeps to the road for a long while and I wanted to stay beside the coast so I initially followed faint paths through the grass at the head of the bay that led me to a long wooden bridge. An information board informed me that over the bridge is Aberlady Bay Local Nature Reserve while the John Muir Way frustratingly goes inland, which seemed to me a travesty in such good weather, so I ignored the trail and crossed the bridge. I now had no directions to follow and no idea where I was going, so when I reached a junction I made a hasty decision to turn left and this brought me to the sandy beach of Gullane Sands. Progress was slow across the soft sand as I made my way to Gullane Point and off the beach to round the headland while trying to find my way, which just added to the fun.

I found it thoroughly enjoyable trying to navigate a course through an area that felt like I was lost in a maze of conflicting, narrow paths through the dunes with a golf course inland that could bite me if I strayed too far. Eventually I emerged above Gullane Bay with the village above and I could have returned to the John Muir Way at this point, which passes through Gullane, but I was having too much fun following the coast so I turned left onto a path that kept up the challenge. Sometimes I dropped onto the beach and other times I tried to find a path through the dunes which avoided the ubiquitous golf courses. Eventually a wooden boardwalk took me off a beach and up to the back of some houses, and at the far end I turned right to reach a junction where I was joined by a familiar sight, the John Muir Way, which had finally had enough of following roads and had returned to the coast. Just as it started to rain, I followed the trail along the edge of a golf course and into the town of North Berwick. The weather on this walk provided me with sensational views across the sands, notably on Seton Sands and Gosford Bay, where I took loads of pictures. The good weather encouraged me to divert off the trail, making up my own way along the coast, while the John Muir Way takes a cyclist-friendly route inland. I’m sure if the weather had been poor then I would have been happy to follow the trail, but instead I had a great walk.