Leith Layover: Britannia and Ocean Terminal

Ocean Terminal sits on the old dock land at Leith, north of central Edinburgh, with the former royal yacht Britannia berthed alongside it, the warehouse quayside of the Shore fifteen minutes upriver and Newhaven’s harbour and lighthouse a mile the other way, all of it on flat ground.

The Royal Yacht Britannia at Ocean Terminal

Britannia was launched on the Clyde in 1953 and served the royal family for 43 years, covering more than a million nautical miles and calling at over 600 ports in 135 countries before she was decommissioned in 1997. She has been tied up at Leith ever since, entered through a visitor centre inside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre and then across a gangway onto the ship.

The tour runs across five decks, from the bridge and the state apartments down to the engine room, on an audio commentary that is included in the £21 adult ticket and comes in more than thirty languages. What tends to stick is how ordinary the private quarters are: single beds, chintz, a writing desk and wall lamps that would suit a 1950s guest bedroom, a corridor away from a state dining room that seats 96. Book the ticket before you come out here rather than at the door, and watch the last admission: 4pm from April to September, 3pm in winter, with two hours allowed after it.

The shopping centre she is attached to has a name it never earned. Ocean Terminal was built over the Henry Robb shipyard, which closed in 1983 and took a large part of Leith’s working life with it, and the berth alongside was laid out for cruise liners. Britannia was then moored permanently in that berth, and no passenger ship has used it since.

Fifty minutes on one bus from the airport

Lothian’s service 17 runs from Edinburgh Airport straight to Ocean Terminal, out through Clermiston, Blackhall, Drylaw and Muirhouse, up to every half hour and taking about 50 minutes. It is slower than going into the centre, but it is one bus with no change, which on a tight afternoon is worth more than the twenty minutes. Coming from the middle of town instead, it is about half an hour on a bus down Leith Walk, or the tram if the full line is running.

Britannia’s route is five decks of ships’ stairways over the better part of two hours, and there is no version of that visit where a suitcase comes with you.

The Shore, where the Water of Leith reaches the docks

Fifteen minutes upriver from Ocean Terminal, the Water of Leith arrives at the docks and the quay on both banks is lined with stone warehouses and merchants’ buildings, most of them now bars and restaurants with tables out on the cobbles. This was a working port before it was anything else: Leith turns up in the record in 1143, ran as an independent burgh from 1827, and was only absorbed into Edinburgh in 1920, which is roughly how long the two have been arguing about it.

The stretch between Bernard Street and Tower Street is where the eating is concentrated, a dense run of kitchens along a few hundred metres of quay. It is also the part of this itinerary that works late, which matters if the flight is an evening one.

Newhaven’s white lighthouse and its fish market

A mile west along the waterfront, past the tram’s northern terminus, Newhaven was a separate fishing village before Edinburgh grew out to meet it. What is left of that is a small stone harbour with a breakwater and a white lighthouse at the end of it, fishing and pleasure boats moored inside, and a fish market on the quay that sells the catch and cooks a good deal of it on the spot.

From the breakwater you are looking straight out across the Firth of Forth to Fife, which is a different view of the water from the one the bridges give you further west.

Collect your bag before you start back: Leith is north of everything and the run out to the terminal goes through or around the centre either way. If the flat waterfront is not what you came for, the main Edinburgh walk does the opposite, all ridge and stairs, between Calton Hill and the castle.