HALFWAY through it, it’s been a funny old summer this year. The memory of 2019 already seems a long way in the past, but this year seems as busy with visitors. Even while a travel ban was still in force, local roads were getting busier, with chippies and takeaways back to life and parking getting tight.

In theory, relaxation to Level 0 has only just happened but people have been streaming into the county for weeks. The first wave was mostly stir-crazy Edinburgh flat-dwellers, cooped up for months with little greenery.

This was followed by a swathe from across the Central Belt. Though Edinburgh Trades and Glasgow Fair are history, Glasgow accents soon appeared on high streets and beaches.

By late June, things were busier than a ‘normal’ year, increased by a third influx, this time of English staycationers long before their schools broke last week.

Holiday lets have been booked for weeks and caravan sites equally full. Despite that, numbers of mobile homes have been clustering in beauty spots in unusual numbers and were not generally challenged.

On top of this, many, mostly young, people are wild camping along the coast. The weekend before last, over 150 tents were counted on and beside Yellowcraig Beach.

This passes a record set last year of 120 tents at Tyninghame Links. Small numbers have appeared at Longniddry and Gullane Bents, as well as Seacliff, Belhaven and Skateraw. This causes sanitation problems and requires serious efforts to clear up the litter, bottles, etc afterwards.

Visits inland have been less popular, with railway walks seeing normal traffic of hikers, local families and cyclists. Our many back roads have remained quiet, except for the odd peloton of Lycra warriors filling the road doing 30.

Cafes, restaurants and pubs – especially those with ‘sitooteries’ – are buzzing, helping to heal financial scars from the last year.

The Scottish Seabird Centre is returning to normal visitor numbers. Their Seabird Safari boat trips now have bookings full several days ahead, despite the new Sula now being in service.

One disappointing aspect of this otherwise good news is that people are avoiding public transport and coming by car. Visitors arriving by rail are half normal numbers and buses barely busier than in winter. Another more worrying trend is the almost complete absence of foreign visitors, whose spend is a major part of tourism profitability; we need them to rediscover East Lothian in future.