Discover North Berwick
A working East Lothian seaside town half an hour from Edinburgh, with the Bass Rock offshore and a volcanic hill behind the High Street
What's On
Upcoming events and things happening in North Berwick
Bass Rock Gannet Season
RecurringGannets occupy the Bass Rock from spring into early autumn and the boat season runs with them, roughly late March to early October. Free to watch from shore.
Fringe by the Sea
RecurringThe town's own ten-day arts festival in the Lodge Grounds. The 2026 edition ran 31 July to 9 August; 2027 dates had not been announced as of 17 August 2026.
Lammermuir Festival
RecurringEast Lothian's classical festival, 8 to 20 September 2026. Mostly elsewhere in the county, but Tenebrae sing at St Baldred's Church in North Berwick on 14 September.
North Berwick Christmas Lights Switch-On
RecurringA volunteer-run late-November Saturday: Christmas market from 11am, children's activities at the Abbey Church, live music, lights on at 5pm.
North Berwick Right Now
North Berwick is on the drier east coast, but it is still a North Sea town on an open firth. Bring a windproof layer whatever the forecast says, and expect the haar sea fog to roll in and out between spring and early autumn without much warning. If it turns, the Scottish Seabird Centre, the Coastal Communities Museum in season, and a long lunch are all within a five minute walk of each other.
🚆 National Rail from North Berwick
Live departures
National Rail service from North Berwick. Updates every few minutes.
The Bass Rock, the Law and a harbour in between
North Berwick sits on the south shore of the Firth of Forth in East Lothian, about 30 kilometres east of Edinburgh and reached by a branch railway that has run since 1850. The town wraps around a small stone harbour, with West Bay on one side and Milsey Bay, which most locals still call the East Bay, on the other. Behind it all rises North Berwick Law, a 187-metre volcanic plug with a ruined Napoleonic signal station on the summit and an arch of whale jawbones on the skyline. The current arch is a fibreglass replica, put up in June 2008 after the last of the real jawbones collapsed in June 2005, and locals will tell you so before you have finished asking.
The thing that makes the town nationally known lies about three miles offshore. The Bass Rock is another volcanic plug, and every spring it disappears under nesting northern gannets. A drone survey run by the Scottish Seabird Centre and its research partners counted 52,459 apparently occupied sites on the Rock in July 2025, up from 46,045 the year before, after avian influenza tore through the colony in 2022. The Seabird Centre, which opened on the harbour point in 2000, is where you go to watch the colony on live cameras, and it is where the boats leave from between roughly late March and early October. Everything else about North Berwick, the two golf links, the castles along the coast at Tantallon and Dirleton, the beach huts and the bakery queue, is a good day out arranged around that one extraordinary rock.
Where To Eat
From fine dining seafood to fish and chips by the harbour
The Rocketeer
Seafood in the town's old coastguard station on the harbour, with a glass dining room looking out at the boats and the Bass Rock.
Osteria
A small, made-from-scratch Italian on the High Street. Phone bookings only, closed Sunday and Monday.
The Lobster Shack
Walk-up lobster and crab from a shack on the old pier. No bookings, seasonal hours, benches with a Bass Rock view.