Isle of May, seabird cliffs
Cramond, Causeway
Overview map
Isle of May, fast RIB
Isle of May, puffin with sand eels
Isle of May, Low Light
Isle of May, High Light
Isle of May
Some eight kilometres off the coast of Fife, the Isle of May guards the outermost reaches of the Firth of Forth. This emerald-green gem, defended by impressive cliffs, has long exerted a powerful draw on visitors; it was an important centre for pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, while today it is a National Nature Reserve, renowned for both its seabirds and importance as a pupping ground for grey seals.
There are regular boat trips to the island from April to September each year: the 100-seater May Princess and the twelve-seater fast RIB Osprey both operate out of Anstruther in Fife and give two to three hours ashore, while there is also a fast boat which runs from the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick, over twenty kilometres away in East Lothian. There’s a visitor centre on the island which is open during the season, and this gives information and offers shelter and toilets, but there are no other facilities.
Join the puffarazzi 
While the May is home to breeding guillemots, razorbills, shags, cormorants, eiders and terns, and is an important station for migrants, for most people, there’s one particular bird species that they really come to see – puffins. These incomparably charming and comical birds begin gathering in the sea around the island in April, and gradually move ashore. Taking a break from lives otherwise spent entirely out at sea, up to 60,000 pairs of puffins come here to breed each year, laying their eggs in burrows at the top of the cliffs. In early summer the skies over the island are alive with puffins, while below visitors try to get that perfect photo of a bird carrying a beakful of sand eels back to its burrow. In mid-August the puffins return to the seas.
See the high light – and the low light 
After landing on the island and being attacked by the aggressive terns, most visitors then go hunting for their perfect puffin photo. Once satisfied, it is well worth continuing to explore: a network of paths encircles the island and visitors are asked to keep to these routes; the walk along the cliff edges is very dramatic. The May was the site of Scotland’s first permanently manned lighthouse, a coal-fired beacon built in 1635. It was operated privately until 1814 when the Northern Lighthouse Board commissioned Robert Stevenson to build the current High Light, an ornate tower that resembles a Gothic castle. In 1843 a second lighthouse, the Low Light, was built to provide (with its neighbour) a pair of lights to help align ships, but the building is now used for accommodation for the researchers and volunteers who monitor the island’s bird and animal life.
Bass Rock
The great granite citadel of the Bass Rock is a familiar landmark off the East Lothian coast. Rising precipitously 120 metres from the sea, its bald dome is dusted white by guano and surrounded by thousands of circling birds, making it look like a maritime snow globe. The Bass was once a prison for Covenanters and Jacobites, but these days it’s renowned for being the home of the world’s largest colony of gannets, with an incredible 150,000 of these huge but graceful birds breeding on the rock from February to October. The lighthouse has been unmanned since it was automated in 1988.
Gawp at gannets
Regular boat trips run out to visit Bass Rock from the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick, with a choice of cruising in a catamaran or a fast rigid inflatable. The trips pass around the Bass, getting as close to the rock as is safe, and provide an incredible spectacle – and smell! The combination of bird and rock has led to the Bass being dubbed one of the wonders of the wildlife world by Sir David Attenborough.
Gannets are Britain’s largest seabird, with a 1.8-metre wing span and a striking streamlined shape that enables them to dive at almost 100 km/h into the sea when fishing – looking like a harpoon fired from a gun. Every available spot on the island is occupied, and as well as diving for fish, the birds can be seen fighting, bill fencing, preening, carrying in weed, and – in July – feeding their fluffy chicks.
It’s also possible to take a landing trip to the Bass, which usually gives around three hours ashore, although the seas can be rough and landings can never be guaranteed. These trips give a unique chance to get up close and intimate with the gannets, though there is the risk of being hit by their vomit!
Craigleith
This small island is just over a kilometre out from North Berwick’s harbour. All eyes looking seaward from the town are drawn to the drama of the Bass Rock so that Craigleith, its nearer, less spectacular neighbour, is often forgotten and overlooked. For many years Craigleith was used as a rabbit warren – the animals were introduced to the island to act as a food source. More recently it was home to one of Scotland’s largest puffin colonies, with 28,000 pairs nesting as recently as 1999. The population was decimated after an invasive plant, tree mallow, reached the island and choked their burrows. The mallow had spread from Fidra having been planted there by lighthouse keepers to use as loo roll.
Hundreds of volunteers from the Scottish Seabird Centre have since been helping to control the mallow, and the puffin numbers have started to recover. There are no landing trips but the regular boat trips out to the Bass Rock pass close to the shores of Craigleith, giving views of its puffins, eiders, guillemots, cormorants and shags.
Fidra
Lying 500 metres off the beaches at Yellowcraig is Fidra, which at ten hectares is larger than the Bass Rock or Craigleith, through it reaches only ten metres in height. Robert Louis Stevenson was a frequent visitor to Yellowcraig, and Fidra is said to have been the model for the map in Treasure Island. The island has a prominent lighthouse, built by Robert Louis’ father Thomas and his cousin David A. Stevenson. There are also the remains of a twelfth-century chapel. Like Craigleith, Fidra’s puffin population is recovering following the removal of tree mallow. The island is well seen from Yellowcraig but there are no regular boat trips.
Bass Rock, gannets above the foghorn
Gannet
Bass Rock
Inchkeith
The strategic location of Inchkeith where the Firth of Forth begins to narrow to the north of Edinburgh has ensured its rich history. In 1493 King James IV ordered a mute woman and two small children to be moved to the island in a bizarre deprivation experiment to see what language the children would grow up to speak. It was thought this might show the original language of God; unsurprisingly the children never spoke at all. Subsequently it was used as a quarantine for sufferers of syphilis (‘grandgore’) – a ship carrying the sufferers sailed from Leith; later it served as a refuge for those with the plague.
Inchkeith was first fortified during the sixteenth-century wars between Scotland and England; today it is littered with the extensive remains of batteries and guns from the two world wars. Troops remained here until 1957, and lighthouse keepers until 1986. The island is now abandoned. There are no regular boat trips, but charters can be arranged through Forth Sea Safaris at North Queensferry.
Inchcolm, Abbey
Inchcolm
This green and relatively fertile island’s name means the ‘Isle of Columba’, and the great saint was reputed to have visited in person in AD 567. Nonetheless, the island was home only to a solitary hermit in 1123 when King Alexander I sought shelter here and vowed to build a monastery as thanks for his safety. Following Alexander’s death the next year, it fell to his brother David I to build the current abbey dedicated to Columba. It’s a very popular but memorable place to visit, and two different boat companies operate regular cruises and landing trips from Hawes Pier in South Queensferry. The landing trips usually allow around ninety minutes or so on the island, though it may be possible to return on a later sailing. There is a charge to land on the island – check whether this is included in your boat trip ticket, and there’s a small visitor centre (with toilets) just beyond the jetty. As the boat pulls in you may notice the tiny islet opposite is populated with a host of garden gnomes – and a sign declaring it to be ‘Inch Gnome’; the gnomes are placed there by local boaters.
Climb the abbey bell tower
Known as the ‘Iona of the East’, Inchcolm Abbey boasts the finest preserved group of monastic buildings standing in Scotland. With structures dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, it is a great place to poke around and explore. The cloister is remarkably complete and atmospheric, there’s a rare surviving medieval fresco, and a Viking hogback tomb (now in the visitor centre), but for most people the highlight is the climb up the tiny curving stone steps to reach the top of the bell tower – with grand aerial views over the whole complex.
Inchcolm, ‘Inch Gnome’
Inchcolm, seagull on defences
Stand guard over the Forth
Like most of the islands in the Firth of Forth, Inchcolm is littered with defences from the two world wars. These were first manned in 1915, but reworked with much heavier armaments in 1916 and 1917, with prominent batteries and gun emplacements at both ends of the island; the island was then rearmed in 1939 and the abbey was used as a barracks for a time. The ruins at the eastern end are the most fascinating to explore – you can still pass through an access tunnel to reach parts of them, though take care as the site is decaying and overgrown in places. The views across the Firth to Inchkeith, Cramond, Edinburgh and Fife reveal what a key defensive location this was. The ruins at the western end are guarded by extremely aggressive gulls and access is restricted during part of the nesting season.
Cramond Island
Linked to beautiful Cramond village and beaches by a tidal causeway, this is very much Edinburgh’s island. The crossing is on a concrete causeway, but is only possible for up to two hours each side of low tide. The tide comes in very fast and many people have become stranded on the island, so make sure you pay close attention to the times which are posted on a sign near the start of the causeway. They are also available on the Queensferry lifeboat website. Do not attempt to cross anywhere but the causeway.
Make the tidal crossing
The fact that the causeway is submerged most of the time makes a visit to Cramond feel like a real adventure. There’s a steep flight of steps to descend before beginning the walk across, which is further than it looks, being well over a kilometre. The concrete pylons alongside the causeway were built to stop enemy boats during the Second World War, not submarines as often supposed, as the water isn’t deep enough for the latter. From the far end of Cramond an anti-boat and submarine boom then extended on to reach the tiny islet of Inchmickery, then on to Inchcolm and finally to the Fife coast.
Once on the island a rough path heads up to the highest point, a superb viewpoint for the Forth, with the defences on neighbouring Inchmickery covering it so completely that it looks like a battleship. You can continue from here to pass the ruins of an old farm and the various old gun emplacements, but make sure you leave plenty of time to get back across the causeway before the rising tide.
Cramond Island, defences
Inchmickery