Montrose for the non-golfer.

Rossie Road, 1 mile south · SWT; adult £5, free for SWT members · Open daily year-round; geese season September to March is peak

A 750-hectare tidal lagoon behind the town, managed by the Scottish Wildlife Trust as one of Scotland's most significant estuarine reserves. Pink-footed geese arrive from Iceland in September — numbers peak at 80,000 birds in October, roosting on the basin before dawn and leaving at first light in flights that fill the sky. Eiders breed on the basin shores in summer; oystercatchers, curlews, and bar-tailed godwits use the mudflats year-round. The visitor centre has a telescope pointed at the main roost point; the staff know what is on the water without looking.

4 miles west on A935 · NTS; adult £13.50 · Open April to September

A 1730 William Adam house for David Erskine, Lord Dun, now NTS-managed and containing one of the best collections of needlework in Scotland — including a set of royal-family embroideries made for Queen Victoria. The baroque plasterwork in the saloon, designed by Joseph Enzer, is the building's set piece. The walled garden and walks through the policies extend the visit beyond the house itself. The approach road across the basin causeway is excellent for birds at any season.

Town centre · Museum free · Open Tuesday to Saturday

Montrose Museum on Panmure Place is a good regional collection — natural history, local archaeology, a significant collection of Scottish sculpture (including Roubiliac's work), and a maritime section covering the harbour's herring-fishing history. The High Street itself, unusually wide for a Scottish town, has a good independent bookshop and a covered market building. St Peter's Kirk at the top of the high street is a 17th-century replacement for an older church; the graveyard around it has the markers of Montrose's merchant families.

2 miles south of town · Free access · Year-round

The Scurdie Ness lighthouse marks the south side of the entrance to Montrose harbour — a 36-metre white tower built in 1870 by the Stevensons (Thomas, brother of the novelist's father). The walk south from Montrose along the beach and around the headland to the lighthouse takes about an hour. The fishing village of Ferryden across the South Esk estuary is accessible by road via the A92 bridge and is the kind of quiet working waterfront that has almost entirely disappeared from the Scottish coast.

14 miles north via B966 · Museum seasonal (May to September) · Glen access free year-round

Glen Esk is the southernmost of the Angus Glens — a long valley running northwest from Edzell into the Grampian hills, ending at Loch Lee below Mount Keen. The Retreat tearoom and folk museum at Tarfside is the most northerly inhabited point of the glen and the correct destination for a half-day drive north from Montrose. The museum covers the crofting and rural history of the glen in a converted building; the walk from Tarfside to the Rowan Tree pool on the North Esk is a good hour's round trip.

12 miles north via B966/Brechin · HES; adult £9 · Open daily April to October

The 16th-century tower house is a standard enough ruin, but the 1604 walled garden that encloses it is not found anywhere else in Scotland. The enclosing walls carry carved stone panels depicting the Planetary Deities, the Cardinal Virtues, and the Liberal Arts — a Renaissance iconographic programme that makes this the most unusual garden design of its period in the country. The stonework survives in reasonable condition; it rewards looking at slowly.

13 miles south on A92 · Abbey adult £5.50 · Open daily year-round

The Declaration of Arbroath — the 1320 letter to Pope John XXII asserting Scottish independence — was written and sealed here, and is the most significant document in Scottish history; the original is in Edinburgh, but the abbey visitor centre covers it clearly and without fuss. After the abbey, walk to the harbourside and buy Arbroath Smokies direct from the smoke sheds — haddock split and hot-smoked over hardwood in half-barrels, a protected geographical product since 2004. Iain R. Spink and Swankie Smokies are the producers to find.

10 miles south via A92 to Inverkeilor, then minor road to Lunan · Free · Year-round

A two-mile arc of dark sand backed by dunes with a crumbling 12th-century tower on the headland at the south end. The Red Castle is a ruin with virtually no visitors and no admission charge; the beach itself is usually empty outside school holidays. Car parking at Lunan village. One of the east coast's better-kept secrets and straightforwardly free.