Bass Rock

A mile or so off North Berwick, Bass Rock rises 107 metres out of the Firth of Forth as a steep-sided volcanic plug, and holds one of the world’s largest colonies of northern gannets — tens of thousands of birds turn it white in summer, though numbers dropped sharply after a bird flu outbreak in 2022, and St Kilda has since overtaken it as the biggest colony of all. There’s no ferry or bridge: boats run by the Scottish Seabird Centre and other operators sail out from North Berwick harbour from spring to early autumn, either circling the rock or, when the sea allows, landing on it.

Under the birds are the ruins of a castle first recorded in the early 1400s and later used to hold Covenanter prisoners in the 1670s and 1680s, several of whom died there; in the 1690s, four Jacobite prisoners held it against government forces for close to three years. Bass Rock Lighthouse, built in 1902, still stands on the rock. Tantallon Castle, on the coast nearby, faces it across the water.