The little work is really a bombshell, as ancient divines used to call their tracts, aimed at the senseless making of records by cyclists who go flying from one end of the kingdom to the other, and come back as wise as they went, and infinitely more tired.
Haddington and round it.
Everywhere you go around Haddington, you will be charmed with the character and beauty of the scenery, and its great variety.
Inland, are there not grand old hills and wild woodlands, lonely straths and glens, and splendid sheets of water? Is there not, too, the finest tree scenery that exists anywhere in Scotland? Yes! and the very wild flowers and hedgerows themselves would repay one for all the toil incurred in rattling over somewhat stony roads, and climbing lofty braelands. Then, towards the east, you come in sight of the sea itself—the ever-beautiful, ever-changing sea. Go farther east still, go to the coast itself, and you will find yourself among such rock scenery as can hardly be beaten, expect by that in Skye or the Orkneys. When tired of wandering on the shore, and, if a naturalist, studying and admiring the thousand-and-one strange objects around you, why, you may go and hobnob with some of the fisher folks—male or female, take your choice—they will amuse, ay, and mayhap instruct you, while some of the oldest of them will tell you tales of the old smuggling days, and life in the caves, that will heat anything you ever read in books.
If you should stay at Cockburnspath all night you will not forget to visit the seashore and the caves. Those caves have a history, too; they were connected with the troublesome times of “auld lang syne,” and later still, they came in remarkably handy for bold smugglers, who, before the days of smart revenue cutters, made use of them as temporary storehouses when running a cargo on shore.
How lovely the sea looks on a summer’s day from the hills around here! How enchanting the woods! How wild! How quiet! You will be inclined to live and linger among scenery such as this, book in hand, perhaps, on a bank of wild thyme and bluebells, and if you do notice some blue-coated bicyclist, with red perspiring face and dusty tout ensemble, speeding past on his way to John-o’-Groat’s, how you will pity him! Farther west is the romantic Dunglass Dene, which you will visit without fail. Says Scott:
“The cliffs here rear their haughty head
High o’er the river’s darksome bed;
Here trees to every crevice clung,
And o’er the dell their branches hung:
And there, all splintered and uneven,
The shivered rocks ascend to heaven;
Oft, too, the ivy swathed their breast,
And wreathed their garland round their crest;
Or from the spires bade loosely flare
Its tendrils in the summer air.”
The most romantic parts of Scotland which may be visited by the caravannist, with his tricycle as tender, are:—
I. The counties of Barns, Hogg, and Scott (comprising all the space betwixt a line drawn from Edinburgh to Glasgow and the Tweed).