(Area: 267 square miles)
East Lothian is a coastal county east of Edinburgh. It has also been known as Haddingtonshire. Due to its position there are a number of commuter villages in East Lothian serving Edinburgh.
The East Lothian coast runs along the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and round to the North Sea. Much of this coast is blessed with sandy beaches and a fine climate attracting holidaymakers to resorts such as North Berwick. North of Dunbar is the mouth of the River Tyne, but a far gentler one that its busy namesake further south, entering the North Sea instead in a broad sandy bay.
East Lothian is a generally low-lying fertile county, given to farming and fishing. There are also coal mines, but without leaving East Lothian with a heavily industrialized landscape.
The southernmost part of the county, in stark contrast to most of the shire, is in the Lammermuir Hills, which form a great divide between the Lothians and Berwickshire.
(Area: 362 square miles)
Midlothian is county of contrasts. It lies on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth between, as the name suggests, East Lothian and West Lothian. Midlothian was once also called Edinburghshire, and indeed it is dominated by Edinburgh, though not as much as Middlesex is dominated by London, Edinburgh being a more restrained city and Midlothian the larger county.
Edinburgh, Scotland's historic capital, is possibly the loveliest city in Britain. Its heart is the Castle, perched high on its immemorial rock, and the Royal Mile that runs from the Castle to the Palace of Holyrood House, lined with historic buildings and monuments, all part of the national story. This was main extent of Edinburgh before the Union. North of the Royal Mile is the eighteenth century "New Town", no longer new but with the Georgian charm with which it was built. Edinburgh has long since spread about it and incorporated its port, Leith. The grounds of Holyrood now host the new Scottish Parliament.
In the midst of Edinburgh is Arthur's seat; a solitary hill, precipitous and natural, surrounded but untouched by cityscape.
East and west of Edinburgh are dormitory towns, suburbs and industrial areas but to the south is a rural Midlothian still, with quieter towns and farms, soon rising into the high pastures of the Lammermuir Hills.
(Area: 120 square miles)
West Lothian reaches from the upper reaches of the Firth of Forth inland. Much of West Lothian forms part of the central Clyde-Forth belt. West Lothian was once known also as Linlithgowshire, after its county town.
Linlithgow is a small town three miles inland, on Linlithgow Loch where there stand the remains of Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots. The main coastal town is Bo'ness, once the port of Borrowstoun (as Borrowstounness) it has outgrown its parent to become an industrial town. The Antonine Wall ended here, at Kinneil.
The main industrial towns such as Armadale, Bathgate and Whitburn, lie a little to the south, along the M8 and A71 corridor joining Edinburgh to Glasgow. An early on-shore oil industry was founded here; oil-shale mining, that has left as its legacy the "West Lothian Alps", ubiquitous spoil heaps. In this part of the Clyde-Forth Belt also is Livingston, once a wee village but now a full-grown New Town.