The Waterside Bistro sits in an old riverside building on the Waterside, directly beneath the 12th-century Nungate Bridge, in the quarter of Haddington that lies across the River Tyne. It is one of the town's best-known places to eat, and the river runs a few feet from the door. This is the low, old part of town, and it is a good place to start before crossing back over the water to the High Street.
The town keeps a fair number of pubs. The Tyneside Tavern stands at 10 Poldrate, near the old Poldrate Mill, and the Victoria Inn is a traditional pub at 9 Court Street. Maitlandfield House Hotel on Sidegate has a bar and restaurant. Along the broad High Street the old coaching names survive on the buildings — the Mercat Hotel, the George Hotel, the Golf Tavern on Bridge Street — a reminder that this was a stop on the road north long before the A1 was pushed round the edge of town.
The centre runs along the High Street and Market Street, wide streets with an agricultural-market feel and a good mix of independent shops, cafes and restaurants. On the last Saturday of every month a farmers' market fills part of it, which fits a place that spent centuries as the county town of some of Scotland's richest farmland.
The Tyne shapes the walking as much as the town. Level riverside paths follow the water past the Nungate Bridge, the Waterside and Poldrate, good for an easy hour with children or a dog. The John Muir Way, the coast-to-coast route named for the Dunbar-born naturalist, passes close by. For something more ambitious, Traprain Law rises four miles east — an Iron Age hillfort at 220 metres with long views over the Lothian plain to the coast. Hailes Castle, a riverside ruin, sits about five miles off along the Tyne.
St Mary's Collegiate Church stands at the edge of the medieval core. At 206 feet it is the longest parish church in Scotland, longer than St Giles' in Edinburgh by a couple of feet. Damaged in the English siege of 1548, its tower, transepts and choir stood roofless for over four hundred years until a restoration in the early 1970s set clear glass in the choir. Jane Welsh Carlyle is buried inside. John Knox, who was probably born just across the river in the Nungate, trained here as a priest.
Haddington was made a Royal Burgh under David I and was once the fourth-biggest town in Scotland; Alexander II was born here in 1198. It burnt down more than once, including in 1598, when the fire was blamed on a careless maidservant.
The nearest station is Drem, four miles north, and East Coast and Borders buses serve the town. Lennoxlove House, half a mile south, keeps Mary, Queen of Scots' death mask and silver casket.
On the walls of the town centre, painted marks record how high the Tyne rose in the flood of 1948. People still point them out.