Walking up North Berwick Law: an hour, a volcano and a fake whalebone

There is a hill directly behind North Berwick's High Street, and from the top of it the whole point of this stretch of coast becomes obvious in about four seconds. North Berwick Law is 187 metres high, about 614 feet, and it is a volcanic plug: the hard core of an old volcano, left standing when the softer rock around it was scoured away. So are the islands sitting out in the Firth in front of you. So is Arthur's Seat, which you can see across the water in Edinburgh on a clear day. Climb the Law and you have read the geology of half of southern Scotland off a single viewpoint.

The route

There are two sensible starts. From the town, walk up Law Road, past the health centre on St Baldred's Road, and keep going as the houses give way to fields; it is about a kilometre and a half of steady tarmac to the car park at the foot of the hill on the B1347. If you have a car, park there for free and skip the road walk. Everything below assumes the car park as the start.

From the car park a well-used path goes through a gate and swings round the western flank of the hill, climbing gently at first over grass. Then it turns and goes up properly. The last stretch is steep, rough and worn, over rock rather than path in places, and it is genuinely slippery when wet. Nothing about it is technical, but you will use your hands in the final hundred metres and you will not enjoy it in sandals. Reckon on 45 minutes to an hour return from the car park, or an hour and a half return from the middle of town.

The summit

Two things are up there. The first is the ruined shell of a Napoleonic-era signal station, one of a chain built along this coast to watch for a French invasion that never arrived. The second is the whalebone arch, and it is worth being straight about it.

An arch of whale jawbones has stood on this summit, on and off, since 1709. The set most people remember collapsed in June 2005 after decades of North Sea weather. In June 2008 it was replaced with a fibreglass replica, and that replica is what stands there now. Nobody local pretends otherwise, and nobody local minds. It is still the shape that tells you from the train which town you are approaching, and it is still the thing everyone photographs.

The view is the payoff. Directly below you are both town beaches, West Bay on one side and Milsey Bay, the East Beach, on the other, with the harbour on the point between them. Out in the Firth, four more old volcanoes are strung west to east: Fidra first, then the Lamb, then Craigleith almost straight out from the harbour, and finally the Bass Rock, furthest east and furthest offshore. Beyond them is the Fife coast. Behind you, East Lothian's farmland runs south to the Lammermuirs. West on a clear day: Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat.

What to know before you go

It is free and it is open at any hour, which makes it the best-value thing in the town. It is also completely exposed at the top, and the wind coming down the Firth is stronger up there than anything you felt on the High Street. If it is blowing hard, and it often is, either accept that you will not stand still for long or leave it for another day.

Go early on a clear morning if you want the islands sharp. This coast gets haar, the cold sea fog that rolls in off the North Sea between roughly April and September, and it will erase the view without warning while the town below stays perfectly pleasant. Haze in the afternoon is the other enemy.

Dogs are fine and there are plenty of them. Wheelchair or pushchair access is not: the upper path rules it out entirely. If someone in the party cannot do the climb, the Coastal Communities Museum on School Road has an audio tour of the town instead, and the Seabird Centre's viewing balcony gives you the islands without the ascent.

Making a longer day of it

The Law sits on the line of the John Muir Way, the coast-to-coast route from Helensburgh to Dunbar. Section 9 finishes at North Berwick and section 10 starts here and heads south and east towards Dunbar, and the route's own description points out that leaving the town southwards gives you the chance to climb the Law. So if you want more than an hour on your feet, the obvious extension is to go up the hill in the morning and take the coast path east in the afternoon, out past the Glen golf links and Canty Bay to Tantallon Castle, roughly five kilometres, with the Bass Rock alongside you the whole way. Worth checking Historic Environment Scotland's page before you commit to the castle: there is currently no visitor access to Tantallon's east tower staircase and doocot, and its winter hours are shorter.

Either way, do the Law first. Everything else in North Berwick makes more sense once you have seen it from above.