Row Around Scotland – 2020/2021
To celebrate 10 years of Scottish Coastal Rowing in 2020, the Scottish Coastal Rowing Association (SCRA) invited all clubs to take part and row around the whole of Scotland’s Coastline. This year was the designated year of Coast and Water. Unfortunately, it was also the year of Covid lockdown. Never an organisation to be beaten, the SCRA organised the Virtual RowAround Scotland 2020 (VRAS), which began on 25th March 2020 and continued in real time around the coast. The actual RowAround took place in 2021.
For VRAS, all clubs were asked to provide an account of their section of coastline, and Eskmuthe’s was between Fisherrow Harbour and Port Seton Harbour. This is our virtual account and highlights the wealth of our heritage and how lucky we are to live where we live and row where we row!
Fisherrow to Port Seton
We launch the boats into Fisherrow Harbour and wave off the land team, who are cycling the coast to Port Seton along the John Muir Way. We get a brief glimpse back to Portobello and Leith before turning eastwards and heading along the seafront. The sea is sparkling and we’ve got a warm westerly breeze behind us.
The route soon takes us over the historic mussel beds, past the links and Loretto playing fields to the Muthe of the River Esk. A nice uncontroversial club name, Eskmuthe - not Musselburgh and not Fisherrow, so no one is offended! The muthe has seen a great deal of action over the years. The Romans supposedly had their harbour on the Esk, but this was not found to be the best place, and it was moved to its present site at Fisherrow. On the 10th of September 1547, The Subtle Galley, the state-of-the-art English battleship, fired the first shot of the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. This was the biggest and bloodiest battle ever fought in Scotland and the last fought between the separate kingdoms of Scotland and England. It marked the culmination of the ‘Rough Wooing’, Henry VIII’s effort to force marriage between the two child sovereigns, Edward VI of England and Mary, Queen of Scots. This ended in a disastrous defeat for the Scots, with 10,000 dead.
A good 5.6m tide would get us up over the weir to have a better look at the town, but today we’ll just keep going. In the 1950s, the next stretch would have had us rowing past Musselburgh’s historic golf links and racecourse, but in 1964, a long concrete wall was completed to enclose a series of giant lagoons. Built to take the ash from Cockenzie Power Station (more of that later), they were gradually filled in over the years and are now a habitat for wading birds. Musselburgh (or Levenhall) Lagoons are one of the finest locations for bird watching on mainland Scotland. The lagoon’s proximity to food-rich mudflats, estuary and the open sea makes it a hot spot for wintering waders such as curlews, redshanks and bar-tailed godwits, sea ducks, grebes and many other birds.
The site was originally created to store ash waste from the former Cockenzie Power Station. Built on reclaimed mudflats and surrounded by a sea wall to protect the ash storage lagoons. Over time, each of the ash lagoons has been capped and landscaped by the site’s owner, Scottish Power. With support from RSPB Scotland, the last two lagoons (lagoon 6 and lagoon 8) have been transformed into wetland wonderlands. The channels, pools and islands within lagoon 8 support an internationally important wader roosting site, which led to the area being designated as part of the Firth of Forth Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Protection Area (SPA). The restoration of lagoon 6 has been designed to provide habitat for ground-nesting birds and wetland invertebrates, including dragonflies and damselflies.
As we row past the lagoons, we get a wave from the cyclists. Our local seal is tracking us, too.
As we approach Prestongrange, we get to the town boundary. “It’s all oor ain”, we shouted in 2016 as we enacted the first ever Rowing of the Marches, throwing the clod of turf into the air and getting showered in good old Musselburgh soil! A lot of the boats here today joined us on that day too as part of the maritime addition to the Riding of the Marches, celebrated in Musselburgh every 21 years.
This coast has a grand industrial past. Mining and trade at Prestogrange and its harbour, Morrison’s Haven, date back to the 12th century. Looking over at the museum, we can see the winding gear, the power house and the pithead baths where the Eskmuthe boats were built.
We row on a bit more and stop for cake and coffee as we drift slowly past Prestonpans. The cyclists will get a better look at the fine murals and sculptures that line the shore road. Ah, feel the sun, where else would you rather be on a day like this?
Beyond Prestonpans, we’re passing the site where Cockenzie Power Station once stood. On September 26, 2015, on a still Saturday morning, a flotilla of craft sailed, rowed and paddled to see the towers being demolished - and what a treat it was. A countdown, an explosion and the two towers fell towards each other in slow motion, crumpling as they touched. Boatie Blest were seen some hours later when they emerged from the cloud!
On past Cockenzie Harbour and village, where the Wagonway project has set out to promote the first ever railway in Scotland, which ran between Tranent and Cockenzie from 1722. You can almost smell the coffee and cakes in Cockenzie House café.
Just a short row to Port Seton Harbour, along the path where runners ran the relay race at Boatie’s regattas a few years ago. That was fun.
I think I can just make out Boatie’s boats waiting to take up the baton. Here we go, ready for the handover.
For the real Rowaround in 2021, Eskmuthe got a special mention at the SCRA AGM for rowing the largest number of sections in the event. We rowed from South Queensferry to Newhaven, Newhaven to Portobello, Portobello to Fisherrow, Fisherrow to Port Seton, Port Seton to North Berwick, North Berwick to Dunbar, Dunbar to Cove, Cove to St Abbs, Berwick to Paxton House on the Tweed. We missed out on the St Abbs to Berwick due to bad weather.
