North Berwick is a small seaside town on the East Lothian coast of Scotland, about 40 km east of Edinburgh and easily reached by train in under an hour. It has an excellent beach, a compact and pleasant town centre, and the Bass Rock offshore — a massive volcanic plug that holds one of the largest gannet colonies in the world, with over 150,000 birds visible from the shore and reachable by boat in summer.
The Scottish Seabird Centre on the harbour is a good starting point, with live camera feeds to the gannet colony and boats that circle the rock. Tantallon Castle, a dramatically sited 14th-century ruin on the clifftops a few kilometres east, looks directly at the Bass Rock and is one of the most impressive castle sites in Scotland. The conical hill of North Berwick Law above town gives a 30-minute climb to the best view on the Forth, and the West Links golf course is one of the oldest and most copied in the world. The town has a few good restaurants and the kind of prosperous independent-shop character typical of the East Lothian coast. North Berwick is genuinely one of the best day trips from Edinburgh and deserves more attention than it usually gets.