Bathing waters categorised Excellent in 2022

Ones that are near to Edinburgh & public transport:

  • Aberdour Silversands. Train and a 1km walk to the beach.
  • Kinghorn Pettycur. It’s not as much a slam-dunk from the train as the Harbour Beach, although it’s less than a mile.
  • Kirkcaldy Seafield. Train to Kirkcaldy and a 2km walk to the beach.
  • Gullane. Gotta be a bus. Or could take bikes on the train and cycle from Drem or North Berwick (both less than 10km).
  • North Berwick (West). Train or bus to North Berwick, then a short walk through the town.
  • Seacliff. Train to North Berwick and less than 10km by bike.
  • Several on the East coast, South of Dunbar, which will need a bit more travel planning … maybe next season.
  • There’ll be some bathing beaches categorised Good which have good swimming and are accessible by public transport. Some other time!

Investigating water quality for beach swims

As a family, we have a lot of good memories about Kinghorn Beach. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to get onto our list of “must have” sea swims because historically the beach has been categorised Poor or Sufficient for all years with data and live predictions (on 2023-07-31) are poor .

But how can I easily find out which beaches in Scotland have good water quality for swimming?

  • SEPA has a portal to profiles and quality data for all the sites it monitors. You have to choose from a drop-down list so you need to have identified your beaches first, or had a good knowledge of the area. There is a map on that page which shows the location of a site once you’ve chosen in, so this is probably the page to get familiar with.
  • You can see all the sites if you go to https://map.environment.gov.scot/sewebmap/ and choose layers “Bathing waters” and “Bathing waters point”. The former are polygons which are visible at small map scales, the latter are points (centroids?) which are visible at large scale.

Some notes about water quality categorisation:

  • Monitoring is done from 1 June to 15 September – the extent of the bathing season
  • Quality is defined by measuring levels of E. coli and intestinal enterococci (1, 2). Legislation defines the cut-offs into Excellent, Good, Sufficient and Poor.
  • Quality indicators have nothing about other pollution, agricultural run-off etc. although SEPA ” make observations at bathing waters for cyanobacterial (blue-green algae) blooms, macroalgae (seaweed), marine phytoplankton and other waste and instigate actions if required.”
  • At the end of the season, an overall category is given to each site. There are a number of “disregards” a site can have, so that short-term issues are not included in the overall category.

Not so much music practice 2023-02-20

First day back at work so little opportunity for practising music. I decided against going to Phoenix Folk’s Monday steady session, listening instead to Wickedest Sound from the 99% Invisible podcast which charts the rise of Jamaican ska, rock steady and reggae from advances in sound system technology. 100% fascinating for sure. Then, practising the A part of Cumbernauld House on the mandolin.

Music practice 2023-02-19

Less practice than I’d hoped for because the big kid has Winter vomiting bug & I’ve been disinfecting like a daemon.

  • Wrote out The Badger [1] [2] so I can work on some chords to fit behind it
  • Remembered that the played music is 3 semitones higher than the notation so there is no way I’m going to be able to play N’Gille Dubh Ciar Dubh nor The Badger on mandolin in the session. Better to remember now than later!

Music practice 2023-02-18

There are three music events in early March that I’m preparing for: a return to my regular intermediate guitar class with the Scots Music Group, an online session with Brighde Chaimbeul (organised by Far North Retreats) and another online session from Phoenix Folk “Online and in harmony with special guest Ali Say“. Needless to say, I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, and need to focus so that I get the most out of each of the events.

Today’s practice:

  • Some major scales including circle of fifths C, G, D, A, E, and practising F in the first position.
  • Thinking about what I’ll do when I visit London this week for my day job. Will I take the mandolin? I’ve written out Cumbernauld House and Planxty Irwin for it (and played the tunes through) so I have something prepared for the 2-day trip.
  • Have written out N’Gille Dubh Ciar Dubh for Brighde’s session. I need to do a lot of work to select chords to put behind the melody and drone, and this slow air is the simplest to start with. It’s pentatonic in A, and I’ve previously played it on the guitar one octave below the score.