There are no boats to Cramond Island you have to walk there from the south shore of the Firth of Forth along a tidal causeway that crosses gleaming mud and ribbed sandbanks, a crunchy carpet of mussels and winkles underfoot. The island is thickly coated with soft grass and wild flowers and possessed of magnificent views across the firth…… Once you have passed through the island’s grove of willows and sycamores, traversed the rocky knoll of the summit and dropped down to the north shore, you discover just how thoroughly these islets of the Forth were fortified during the world wars of the twentieth century. Here are concrete pillboxes, observation bunkers. Gun emplacements and searchlight bases. A couple of miles up the firth the great red dinosaur humps of the Forth Railway Bridge rise over the trees, with the naval dockyard of Rosyth in their shadow – prime targets for the German bombers.

Extract from Best Wild Places by Christopher Somerville