Never mind secret garden, this pint-sized cottage owned by an architect and a sculptor is tucked away on a secret beach in a corner of Scotland packed with historyBook into this pint-sized self-catering cottage, around an hour's drive south-east of Edinburgh, and you're not so much buying time in someone else's property as time in another world. You park your car, throw your luggage in a wheelbarrow and set off on foot, through a short tunnel, to reach the cabin. It's a theatrical approach, rewarded with a magic trick: at the other end you're confronted by a tiny, picture-perfect harbour. To the left are two small stone cottages. The cabin and another house perch to the right and, in the middle, are the 19th-century harbour walls and a sandy beach.The secrecy is all part of the plan. Owned by architect Ben Tindall, whose eclectic back catalogue includes Edinburgh's Jupiter Artland, and his wife Jill Watson, a sculptor (her gorgeous bronze seaweed-shaped hooks are scattered throughout), the cabin has been designed to raise funds to maintain the harbour and what Ben describes as "17 acres of liability".It welcomes the "right sort of visitors" ? locals, artists, writers and anyone who will appreciate the waterfront as it is rather than demand public toilets, ice-cream vans or a tarmac approach road. There is an aversion to publicity here, and strictly no signage.Inside, a cosy cornflower-coloured sitting and dining room comes with Orkney chairs and a woodburning stove backed by beautiful willow pattern tiles. Above the fire is a huge mirror covered in shells, and old maritime-themed photographs line the walls. But there's Wi-Fi too and, in one corner, a flatscreen TV painted, wavily, in the same bright blue.Off this room is a kitchen with more amenities (dishwasher, fridge, microwave and hob) than its tiny dimensions promise and, at the other side of the cabin, two pea-green bedrooms with seaweed-themed fretwork ? one has a double box bed, the other a bunk. Beside them is a modern shower room with underfloor heating. And there are little jars and vases of wild flowers from the hill behind the cabin and one of the best collections of books I've seen in a self-catering property.There's much cultural richness in this corner of Scotland, from John Muir's birthplace (jmbt.org.uk) to Fast Castle, a ruined coastal fortress that's thought to have been the inspiration for Wolf's Crag castle in Sir Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor. In the late 19th century, the Glasgow Boys formed an artists' colony just inland at Cockburnspath, and Siccar Point is famous among geologists as the site where James Hutton proved his uniformitarian theory of geological development in 1788."Muir said the cliffs of Dunbar were as wild as anything he'd seen in America. You don't have to go a long way to find wilderness," said Ben.Be lulled by the waves, swim with eider ducks and seals in the harbour and flag down the two fishermen who still work out of the harbour to buy crab and lobster.? East Coast Trains (0845 722 5333, eastcoast.co.uk) and Europcar (0871 384 1087, europcar.co.uk) provided transportFollow Rhiannon on Twitter @rhiannonbattenSelf-cateringScotlandUnited KingdomShort breaksRhiannon Battenguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
No comments:
Post a Comment