Arthur's Seat and More of Edinburgh

July 20

The past two days I was wondering why on earth I had booked us into a city for 7 nights.  Up until now, we’ve been quite happy out in the countryside, exploring, hiking and enjoying.  Cities and the attendant traffic, crowds and same-same stores are not really our cup of tea.  But today we decided we would climb the famed “Arthur’s Seat” in Edinburgh.  And so I was very glad to be here.

A ridiculous picture that has no relation to the post except that it's the
back of a truck I saw on the way to Arthur's Seat.  Note where they
have offices - made me laugh!

Edinburgh is a fabulous city. And I'm not particularly fond of cities.   It has Princes Park, and it has Arthur’s Seat - a massive mountain in the middle of the city with hiking trails all over it.  We drove into town, found a parking spot after a few tries, and walked down the hill to Holyrood House, home of the royal family when they are in Edinburgh.  There were police all over the place, and the parking lot near the royal residence was closed off.  I asked one of the policemen on duty what the problem was, and he said that Prince Charles and Camilla were due in the next day to open the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.  Apparently it’s procedure to set up a police presence around the palace at all the “weak points” a couple of days in advance of any royal visit.  And that was all.

View of Arthur's Seat from near Holyrood Palace.  It's huge and a long way up.

Holyrood House from halfway up the Seat

Holyrood from the top of Arthur's Seat.

We carried on up the trail, and what a fantastic climb it was.  It probably took us about an hour to get to the top.  We happened to choose the ‘workout’ route - we found out later that there were other easier ways up, but they don’t have the views, and it’s less challenging.  The way we’ve been eating and drinking our way through Scotland, a workout was a very good thing to do!  There were a couple of points where I thought I might lose my nerve, but I figured if the 5-year old in front of me could do it, so could I.  There are a couple of steep drop-off points, but the path was wide enough that I could hug the cliffside.  

This is a popular spot with tourists and locals alike. There is a huge meadow at one point which seems to be a good spot to take a bunch of small rocks and create your initials with the initials of your significant other inside a heart.  They seem to be kicked around a bit and make marks in the grass so you can see where an old one was.  We restrained ourselves.

Starting out - doesn't look too bad!

Much nicer than the Grouse Grind steps.  Just sayin'

About halfway up.  Getting steeper

Almost to the top - there's a gorgeous big meadow here covered in
little reddish-brown pebbles which people use to create their initials
inside a heart with someone else's initials.  And those get kicked around
and the grass dies under the stones, and then it's kind of spelled out in dead
grass for awhile.  And then someone else uses the same pebbles for their
initials . . . and so on, and so on!

View from the top - you can see a very long way!

A little mountaineering skill was required here.  Turns out
I could have gone around this on the path. . .

Sitting on the edge

Spectacular city location and views

Looking the other way

  

Pretty flower we see everywhere in Scotland.

St. Anthony's Chapel - found this on the way down Arthur's Seat -
we took the back way down.

A little info on the chapel

Scottish bluebells - very dainty without the huge leaves they have in Vancouver

Fence around Holyrood.  Really pretty

The Royal family has a lot of Range Rovers.

Who wouldn't want a door like this?  It was on the outside
of Holyrood.  I guess the queen doesn't use this one.

This is the doorway for the beautiful doors

When we came down the hill, we walked through an old graveyard (this is becoming a habit!), and up through town to some other landmarks on Calton Hill that we had seen from Arthur’s Seat.  While at the top, we took note of the cranes that were near where we had parked the car, and figured that when we were in town, we would just look for the cranes and find our parking spot.  As it turned out, that didn't work so well.  The large buildings in the city completely obscured the cranes.  Sigh.  We really must stop deciding where we'll walk when we're at the top of a hill.  

Old graveyard in the middle of the city.  

Kind of creepy.  These are so old they are falling down.

This is the Nelson monument - a memorial to Admiral Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It monument was built in 1816 and was designed in the shape of Nelson's telescope - a really cool building.  

Nelson Monument - not the best picture.

On the same hill is the Monument of Scotland - a reproduction of the Parthenon in Athens.  It was never completed, due to a lack of funding.  I have no idea why it was important to build this, but it’s an interesting addition to the skyline here.

It was a great day - hiking both hills, and then doing a little walking tour of the city.  Glen stopped in a pub to watch a little golf while I trolled some of the local stores to see if I could find a Patterson tartan (my grandma’s last name), but no luck.  Glen came out of the pub, and joined me - he was very close to buying himself a sporran (whaaaaat?????), but I managed to talk him out of it.  He settled for a hat, and I found a nice sweater.

Stores in Edinburgh 

Love these cobblestone streets!

That's a lot of brick.

We ended the day meeting some friends of our son at a pub near our AirBnB, which was also close to their home.  It was so nice of them to come out and entertain the old folks - I must say Steven has good taste in friends.  While we were waiting for them to arrive, a tiny baby mouse made an appearance in the pub.  It was either paralyzed by fear or some kind of poison.  The women were just watching it to see what it would do, while the men were all ready to “stomp on it”.  The women decided it would be better to catch it in a 2 pint beer-take-out container (remember those!?! - ha!) and let it go outside.  The women won.

Baby mouse just sitting there.  It was only about 2" long
(without the tail!)

Tara, Steve, Helen, Glen and Anne.  A fun night out.