Barns Ness lighthouse

The last time we visited Barns Ness lighthouse was some time last year. At that point you accessed it off the new A1 beyond Dunbar and the Lafarge Cement works, where you can get onto a service road which is the old A1. We went this way this time, but then discovered that the old single track road down to the lighthouse was comprehensively blocked off with huge piles of soil and rubbish. Hmmmm. We turned around and went and parked at Skateraw Bay hard by Torness Power Station, famous for being shut down by jellyfish earlier this year. We then walked along to the lighthouse, assuming that it was now cut off from traffic. Far from it. When we got there we saw cars and car parks. As a result, we thought we must be going mad because we definitely couldn't see an access road from that side.

Returning to the car, we drove into Dunbar, past the cement works and over the railway, and turned right towards the campsite and White Sands. Sure enough, there is now an access road from there to the Barns Ness car park. Oh well, that's the way we'll go next time, perhaps parking at White Sands and walking to Barns Ness. But for a while we thought we were losing our marbles, what with the mystery of the disappearing access road. Apparently, it's all to do with the quarry and cement works wanting to expand on that side, so in return Lafarge built a new access road. Checking the records, it appears we were there on 1 August 2010. In fact, the new access road was open by then, since the Lafarge website says it opened in December 2009. We must have not have noticed it, because if we had done, the mystery of the missing road from the old A1 would never have happened.

Edit: Mr A was very impressed with my image (composition and decision to go B&W), but felt he could do better with photoshop than I managed with the blipfoto uploader. Indeed he could, and the result of his messing around, plus the original colour image, are posted here.