A short walk from Edinburgh lies a small island called Cramond, reached by a narrow causeway across the Firth of Forth. At low tide, the path is dry and easy to cross. At high tide, it disappears completely under several feet of water. People keep getting caught out by the difference.
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The causeway itself was not built for walkers. During the Second World War, engineers lined it with concrete pillars. Their job was to stop enemy boats and submarines slipping through the channel toward nearby docks.
The pillars are still there today, standing like giant teeth along the path. Soldiers once used the same causeway to carry supplies to gun emplacements and searchlights on the island. The invasion they prepared for never came.
Decades later, the causeway has a well-earned reputation for danger. Warning signs stand at the entrance, listing the tide times. They urge visitors to turn back in good time. Not everyone follows the advice.
In the first half of 2023, the RNLI Queensferry Lifeboat Station rescued more than 60 people cut off by the tide, more than half of all its call-outs that year.
In 2025, its lifeboat launched more than 100 times and helped almost 120 people who had got into trouble on or around the water.
Cramond Island itself is quiet and mostly empty today. Grass covers most of it. Old farm ruins remain from a time when a farmer lived there until he died in 1904. Concrete bunkers and gun positions from the war still stand among the fields.
For most visitors, the walk out and back is simple, as long as they check the tide times first. For dozens of people every year, it is not.