The way we were

Further information Scottish Seabird Centre 01620 890202 or log on to www.seabird.org.

Adults #4.50, children/concessions #3.20, family #12.50. Open: Daily 10am-6pm North Berwick Tourist Information, 01620 892197 or www.presence.co.uk/nb North Berwick is the Burberry of Scottish seaside towns. Timeless, tasteful and understated, it has an enduring appeal which draws on the traditional expectations of the seaside resort without submitting to candy floss commercialism. Visiting the town has typically been like re-entering a simpler age; a time when ice-cream only came in three flavours and when chilling out on the beach meant turning blue as you paddled in an icy grey sea.

But North Berwick is changing. When a friend and I took advantage of the recent sunny weather to spend a day there, we discovered a town which has just dipped a toe into the 21st century - and is rather enjoying the experience. The cause of this renaissance is the town's newest attraction, the Scottish Seabird Centre, which opened in May.

This is essentially a hi-tech hide, with remote controlled cameras which allow you to watch the private life of the gannets, puffins and other seabirds nesting on the islands in the Firth of Forth, without disturbing their environment. The technology is so sophisticated you can operate the cameras yourself, rotating, panning and zooming like one of David Attenborough's star cameramen.

It sounded good and we turned up ready for the full Bill Oddie experience - only to be told the cameras were having teething troubles and weren't working properly. Although we could still watch live pictures of the birds, we wouldn't be able to control the cameras ourselves. Luckily there's enough to see at the Centre to make up for hitches like this.

The Centre's main focus is the gannet colony on the Bass Rock. This wild and windy little island, 350ft high, was the religious retreat of St Baldred who was sent to evangelise Lothian by St Mungo. Apparently much of his time here was spent "fasting and weeping and wailing". Not surprising, really. It must have been miserable in winter. The island has been noted for its gannet colony for centuries; even getting a mention in a 12th century Papal Bull for its Solan geese (another term for gannets). Today it's the world's largest single rock gannetry with 40,000 pairs returning to breed each year. We watched as this vast feathery carpet of birds fed their young, preened and squabbled, their language interpreted for us by a guide. It was like watching an elaborate theatre of signs.

The Centre also has cameras on the nearby tiny island of Fidra which has a large puffin colony, and an outdoor viewing platform fitted with powerful telescopes, from where we watched cormorants, shags and puffins swimming as well as feeding. In winter, when most of the birds have gone, these telescopes will be trained on the seals which come here to pup in December: there are even plans for a live link-up with the Falkland Islands, so visitors will be able to watch the albatrosses in the South Atlantic.

North Berwick may be moving with the times, but it doesn't intend to change too quickly. The town might now boast an internet cafe, but most of the shops have retained their original frontages and have an old-fashioned charm. And although it has now got a bistro, Millars, where we were able to eat fajitas and bruschetta at lunchtime, it also has a hardware shop and a traditional sweetshop. There's even a ladies hairdresser with a sign in the window advertising Vaseline shampoo ("Leaves your hair so easy to set") which looks like it has been there since 1952.

The town's heyday was in the 19th century when the railway brought well-to-do Victorians here, keen to enjoy the sandy beaches and excellent golf courses. Huge holiday homes were built and everyone from Edward V11 to Asquith came here, turning it into a sort of Caledonian Cap Ferrat.

Much of this elegant simplicity remains. After exploring the town, we wandered down to one of its long gold beaches and sat on the dunes watching children make sandcastles, people flying kites and families eating picnics out of tupperware boxes. An elderly man rolled up his trousers and paddled in the sea, chuckling as the water foamed and tickled at his ankles. Nobody was in any hurry. We sat for ages, just gazing at the Bass Rock, its thick covering of guano making it glisten like a wedding cake in the sun.

Then, yawning madly from the strong sea air, we made our way up Quality Street for some fish and chips which made for a perfect end to the day, in a pleasant, 1952 kind of way The hi-tech Scottish Seabird Centre aside, Rebecca Ford finds North Berwick as reassuringly unchanged as ever

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