Yellowcraig Beach & Fidra views, East Lothian

Yellowcraig is East Lothian's postcard: a curve of clean sand backed by buckthorn and pine, looking straight out at Fidra island and its lighthouse — reputedly Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Treasure Island. For a pilot it offers easy, legal seaside flying 40 minutes from Edinburgh with a proper subject offshore. Launch from the beach (not the busy dune picnic area) and work the tide line at golden hour; the low sun across the ripples with Fidra silhouetted is the banker shot, and the Lamb and Craigleith islands plus Bass Rock line up in the distance for long-lens-style compression from altitude. Now the big caveat: Fidra itself is an RSPB reserve with a serious puffin and seabird colony, and you should not overfly the island — in the April-to-August breeding season especially, disturbance risks an offence and will rightly get drones a bad name. Shoot it as a backdrop from the shoreward side and it loses nothing. Edinburgh Airport's FRZ is around 28km west, so airspace is clean. The beach is a council-managed countryside site with a large pay-and-display car park; it gets genuinely busy with families and dog walkers on warm weekends, so early mornings or off-season are the times to fly. Onshore northerlies bring chop and salt haze; an ebbing tide gives you the biggest, emptiest expanse of sand to work with.