There’s something infinitely romantic about castle ruins: collapsed walls, moss and lichen creeping, clambering, into spaces which would have borne witness to warriors and defenders, gentry and servants. The ruins are a stone footprint of lives once lived.

Tantallon is the last-built of Scotland’s grand medieval castles and for 300 years it belonged to the powerful Earls of Douglas. It guards a rocky cliff-edge 30 miles east of Edinburgh where the widening Firth of Forth finally gives way to the North Sea. East Lothian is littered with castle ruins but none are more moody and majestic than Tantallon.

Like modern visitors, the inhabitants of the castle must have been in constant thrall to the violent waves visible from every window. This is a wild, exposed place, with gorgeous swirling coves beneath the battlements that Cromwell attacked in 1651.

Climb the spiral stairways past rooms once candlelit and still rushed with salt air, and emerge at the top to spectacular views. Cromwell and his invaders might have laid much of the original castle to waste but you’ll still find splendour, splendour everywhere.

Images courtesy of Beth, Stefan Klaas & kDamo