Seaton’s Cliffs, Arbroath.

Now that Lockdown has been eased in Scotland it was time for a day trip and it was to one of my favourite Scottish coastal walks Arbroath’s spectacular Seaton’s Cliffs. The red sandstone cliffs face out to the North Sea and on a clear day you can see the Bell Lighthouse on the horizon.

The lighthouse has been keeping vessels safe for over 200 years and was designed by Robert Stevenson, who as well as being famous for building lighthouses was also the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of books such as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde amongst others.

The walk begins in the Victoria Car Park and is approximately 7 miles long if you take in Auchmithie and apart from the initial climb at the start of the walk it is a relatively flat walk.

There are some fascinating rock formations such as the Deil’s Heid and the Needle’s E’e, pictured below, and it’s well worth the visit just for the rock formations.
If you are lucky you’ll also spot some of the local wildlife in the form of sea birds and if you are really lucky a dolphin or two.

When I visited there was a lot of activity going on people walking, people fishing and even people canoeing meanwhile out at sea there was a huge former floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel was being towed from Dundee to Norway to be scrapped.

On sunny day this clifftop walk is lovely but be warned that can change all to quickly. Without any real warning the wind got up and the rain lashed down and suddenly the walkers, who only a few moments earlier were enjoying strolling along dressed in shorts and t-shirts and without a care in the world, were soaked to the skin. Lucky I was able to take shelter in a nearby polytunnel in which were rows and rows of strawberries. I only had a few!

For the next 10 minutes the monsoon like rain batterdown and the wind was blowing it sideways then just as quickly as it started it was gone and the sun reappeared and started to dry off those who weren’t so lucky as me and caught the full force of the downpour.

Overall, this is a fine walk on a, mostly, tarred footpath but there are sections not for those with a faint head for heights as there are some sections of the path that if you were to fall over, well lets just say it’s a long down but don’t let that put you off as this is a lovely walk with the right weather.