For those of us living in and around Glasgow, East Lothian might seem like a bit of a stretch for a day trip. But if you travel outwith the commuter rush hour, the area is easily accessible in just over an hour from Glasgow – making it an ideal day out with a difference.
And if you’d prefer less time travelling, Archerfield Walled Garden is a convenient one-stop shop. A retail, hospitality and leisure destination on the Archerfield Estate in the heart of East Lothian, it’s situated in idyllic grounds near the village of Gullane, just ten minutes from North Berwick.
You can easily spend an entire day within the estate: enjoying luxury shopping, a gorgeous garden café and outdoor trails for walking. Visitors can crank up the adventure with a guided e-bike ride, or wind down at the Hot and Bothy Sauna, with both located on site.
Archerfield Walled Garden was originally built to produce food for the nearby mansion Archerfield House by growing a wide range of exotic fruits (including a whopping 110 varieties of apple and 57 types of pear).
There is still a huge amount of food grown there today, though now it’s produced for their own Garden Café – where the chefs steer much of what is planted according to seasonal recipes.
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This freshness was unmistakable when I dined in the café. Their avocado toast, served on crispy pan-fried sourdough bread, was markedly improved by the addition of home-grown confit tomatoes and delicate pepper pearls. I even indulged in a glass of prosecco with my lunch – as the café is fully licensed – although you can also enjoy fresh barista coffee or cakes from Edinburgh-based Mimi’s Bakehouse.
We then browsed the homeware and plants in the adjoining store, before wandering round the walled garden itself, to see some of the food we had just eaten been grown in the greenhouses.
There’s plenty of options if you want to walk off your lunch, including a woodland ‘fairy trail’, but I opted to burn off my burger (quite literally) in the nearby Hot & Bothy Sauna.
HOT AND SWEATY
OSCAR Brierley and Callum Bird-Neilson established the sauna in 2025 after finding Archerfield Estate to be the perfect setting for their community-led wellness vision. They’ve seamlessly incorporated the surrounding environment into the sauna experience, with wooden changing huts made from discarded pallets, a fire pit created from unwanted bricks and cold plunge ice barrels that are fashioned from ex whisky casks.
Hot & Bothy (Image: Supplied)
The physical benefits of hot and cold therapy – and saunas more widely – are well documented; improved cardiovascular health, increased circulation, and aided muscle recovery. But there’s also a huge mental benefit, with scores of youngsters now opting to socialise in saunas rather than pubs.
“We wanted to create that ‘third space’ for people, beyond work and home, that wasn’t centred around drinking,” explains Oscar. “This is a space where people can come and relax, spend time with their friends and feel good afterwards.”
Hot & Bothy has been designed as a space to linger in. As well as the main sauna, there is a huge yurt sauna (the first in the UK), cold plunge barrels, a firepit with communal seating, a drinks truck and a large tent used for yoga and sound bath sessions. Their standard sauna sessions are 90 minutes, longer than most similar saunas, designed to make the experience more holistic.
BESPOKE EXPERIENCE
Feeling suitably recharged, we then decided to explore more of the local area on a guided bike ride with Ezee Riders, departing from just outside the walled garden. Yet as infrequent cyclists, and having had a rather larger lunch, would we be able to endure a ride at pace across mixed terrain?
Ezee Riders (Image: Supplied)
I needn’t have worried. Tina O’Rourke, owner and chief tour guide of Ezee Riders, uses e-bikes to offer people the freedom of exploring East Lothian by two wheels – but without the cardiovascular challenge.
She took us around the Archerfield estate and then down through the woodland to Yellowcraig beach, all the while sharing fascinating details on the history of the landscape around us.
Tina O’Rourke (Image: Supplied)
Tina’s tour was entirely flexible to our preferences, letting us pause for a wander on the beach before returning, via the village of Dirleton, to the Archerfield Walled Garden.
Despite having squeezed in shopping, lunching, sauna-ing, cycling and walking, we were back in Glasgow in time for dinner. East Lothian might look like a stretch on the map, but it’s easy to reach – and even easier to enjoy once you get there.
