trains, aching feet, castles

Today I took a train with my two friends to a little town outside Edinburgh called North Berwick. This town was home to two castles we intended to walk to and explore, Dirleton and Tantallon. We had googled pictures of each before and noted that Tantallon was right next to the water [Firth of Forth] up on a cliff edge. Basically, it was the cooler one so we thought we'd go to that one first. I have this fabulous book about walking around Edinburgh and several places nearby and that's how we found out about these castles. So we took the train which was loads of fun and a pretty good deal. It was about 1.5 miles to get to the train station and then once in North Berwick, the book said it was about 2.5miles to Tantallon from the station. It recommended to take a taxi or bus but we didn't want to pay for that so we decided to walk. And walk we did. It took a bit of a turn around to find the right road and then we walked down that road for a bit until it weirdly ended and hit a golf course...we were unsure what to do from there, but there was a sign mentioning a path sorta through the golf course that people and their dogs could take. [complete sidenote but there are some crazy guys outside who just broke out into "You Give Love a Bad Name" HA.] So yeah. We tried to take this path but ended up like completely on the golf course and that was awkward and wasn't getting us much of anywhere. So then we saw this couple walking on this little path closer to the coastline. We headed down there and walked along the coast for forever and it was lovely. At this point we still couldn't see the castle. Here we are walking right along the water on a nice little bit of sand and it ends. It's pretty much just cliffs around us but there wasn't anything else we could really do sooo we climbed up what looked like the least straight up area and closet to the road. We made it up and reached the road! Walking along the road for a good 20 or so minutes we saw a sign that said "Tantallon Castle 1/4 mile" and we actually could see the castle in the distance! Upon making it to the castle, we learned it was £5 to get in. But there was no way to really get a good view of the castle without paying the £5 plus we were so glad we actually found the castle. We paid and then went in and promptly sat down to eat lunch...at like 2:45. ha. Then we went exploring! The castle was really cool! There were a lot of windy staircases, which I'm not a big fan of, but it was fine. The views were sweet and there were a lot of neat things to see within the castle. Worth it. When we left we just took the main road we discovered back into town. It was 3miles to the train station from the castle...ayiii. So all in all, at the end of the day, between walking to and from the train station in Edinburgh and then adventuring around North Berwick, we walked like 9 miles. Whoa, Nelly. My feet were killing me. It didn't help that I got a blister yesterday when we walked to another train station to see if we could find it without getting lost, thinking that was the one we'd be going out of, but it wasn't. Thankfully, the one we ended up going out of was not as far of a walk. =) But whose feet wouldn't hurt after that much walking?! It was great to get out of the city and just go exploring other parts of Scotland.