Qualla: Yellowcraig

Yellowcraig: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SixSigma, CC BY 3.0. Looking north-west from the sand at Yellowcraig, you see a small humped island with a lighthouse on top. That is Fidra. Robert Louis Stevenson, who summered around here as a child, drew it from memory when he sketched the map that became Treasure Island. The shape on Long John Silver's chart and the shape of Fidra rising out of the Firth of Forth are the same island. Stand at Yellowcraig on a clear day and you are standing in front of one of the most famous treasure maps in fiction.

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Image: SixSigma | CC BY 3.0

Yellowcraig: Broad Sands

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Yellowcraig has two names. The Ordnance Survey calls it Broad Sands Beach, and the locals call it Yellowcraig after the band of yellow lichen on the rocks at the eastern end of the bay. The beach faces directly across the Firth of Forth to Fife, with Edinburgh's skyline just visi...

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Yellowcraig: On the John Muir Way

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Yellowcraig is a waypoint on the John Muir Way, the 134-kilometre coast-to-coast footpath named for the conservationist who was born in Dunbar, just down the East Lothian coast in 1838. Muir emigrated to America as a boy, fell in love with the Sierra Nevada, and helped persuade t...

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Yellowcraig: Treasure Island, Drawn from a Window

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stevenson's family had Edinburgh roots and East Lothian summer habits. He often stayed at Scoughall Farm a few miles east, where Fidra dominates the seaward view. Years later, in 1881, he was holidaying with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in Braemar when he sketched a map for the boy...

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Yellowcraig: Birds and Tides

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. The wider beach is unfussy: a car park 270 metres back from the sand, wheelchair-accessible boardwalk to a viewing platform, picnic and barbecue area, basic facilities. The East Lothian Countryside Ranger Service manages the dunes and the woodland, controlling invasive species an...

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0