Wanderung 21

Lands Ho! Scotland, England, Shetland, Iceland, Newfoundland

August - September 2009

Monday, August 31st, 2009: : Volksmarch in Edinburgh and Edinburgh Castle

The directions for the Edinburgh Volksmarch that we had dowloaded from the web started at the Waverley Train Station in downtown Edinburgh. The regional train from Dalmeny, a couple of miles from our hotel, to Edinburgh stopped at that station. To avoid driving in Edinburgh, we decided to drive just over to the Dalmeny Station, take the train in to Edinburgh to do the Volksmarch, and then spend the rest of the day looking at Edinburgh Castle or whatever else struck our fancy. As we rode the train in, we passed by the airport just off one of the main runways and had a great view of commercial airplanes taking off. I also had my first chance to really look at some of the Scottish countryside gliding past us as I was way too busy while driving to ever watch the scenery.

Once in Edinburgh, we popped up out of the Waverly Station and immediately began making a 10-kilometer loop around the city. First we walked westward parallel to the railroad tracks for a mile or so. We passed the National Gallery of Art, where they were having an exhibition featuring Spanish art from Goya through Picasso. They had posted huge prints of two of Goya's pieces and one of Picasso's on the exterior of the building. Since both paintings represented each artists best work and had the same size, illumination, and background, I thought it was a fair comparison of how much you would prefer Goya or Picasso art. I preferred Goya, but probably the Gentle Reader is well aware that I'm no big fan of modern art.


 

Along the same stretch we walked through the very nice Princes Gardens that included a wonderfully intricate floral clock maintained by a local horticultural club. We were both intrigued by a Lilliputian stone cottage at one end of the gardens because it was just doggone cute, but we couldn't figure out exactly what function it served. I particularly enjoyed the rose gardens, of course, as the roses were in peak bloom and looked beautiful in that fragile but colorful way of flowers. Since we are retired and not on a fixed schedule, I did have time to stop and smell the roses, and they smelled heavenly.


 

Turning northward, we walked about a kilometer into the "new" section of Edinburgh and then turned right. The streets in that section were wide and straight and the houses rather uniform in their appearance with a fairly consistent facade of gray stonework. In some sense the new section looked clean, modern, and sanitary. In another sense the new section also impressed me as predictable, sterile, and ultimately boring. On 17 Heriot Row, however, we found Robert Louis Stevenson's house, and that was exciting, and I couldn't help but wonder if James Heriot had selected his nome de plume based on the street that R. L. Stevenson lived on.


 

We continued eastward until we reached Balmoral Hill and that was a steep little climb up to the top! But once up there we had a great view of the port section of Edinburgh at the foot of the hill below and the Firth of Forth in the distance leading out to the North Sea on the horizon. Unfortunately, one of those intermittent showers so typical of Scotland closed in just when we were at the top, so we couldn't see details as we could have done on a clear day.

From Balmoral Hill we followed the road as it passed the "new" (but not the newest!) Parliament building and turned southwards, finally joined the Royal Mile that runs from Holyrood Palace to Edinburgh Castle. The NEWEST Parliament building is near the lower end of the Royal Mile, and boy is it different! the newest Parliament consisted of a set of weirdly shaped buildings with odd quotations engraved in the stones and a wall of rocks that looked for all the world like a rock-climbing wall at one side. It had me wondering if that structure really was the Scottish Parliament. Some architect must have had fun with that assignment, I'll tell you!

Seeing a sign for an Internet Cafe, we walked into a store to try to find it. I couldn't see any terminals in the store indicated, so I walked up to the manager and ended up having an almost bizarre conversation that went something like this:

"Good day, would there be an Internet cafe here?"
"Who wants to know?" [I was nonplussed at this question.]
"Well, I'd like to know because I'd like use the internet."
"Who are you?" [I was taken aback at that personal question.]
"My name's Robert Holt."
"Where are you from?" [I was getting irritated at this point.]
"We're from Fairfax, Virginia, in the United States."
"Did you know there is a statue to a Scott who fought in the Revolutionary War in Fredericksburg, Virginia?" [the weirdness continued]
"That's just down the road from where we live."
"Ok, take terminal number 1 downstairs."

By that point in the conversation I really was ready to turn around and walk out, but he quoted a price of only 1 pound per half hour, which was fairly reasonable and we had not seen any other internet cafes in Edinburgh. So in the end we went downstairs to a clean, well-lighted work space and emailed off a "we are here" message to all my friends and family. But can you imagine successfully running a business with an attitude like that?

After having checked in with the folks, we had a quick lunch at a pizzeria just down the block from the statue of Greyfriars Bobby and continued up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle. I certainly did enjoy looking at all the little alleyways, called "closes", along the way as many of them had nice wrought-iron gates in front. The old-fashioned painted storefronts were also quite pretty, and in fact I ultimately succumbed to temptation and stopped in a T-shirt shop to purchased a kilt in Clan Wallace tartan colors.


 

Edinburgh Castle was a functional fortress and military base from the first major construction in the 1200s to the present day. Nowadays, of course, the castle is not really a an active fort but just contains some military remnants such as an Officer's Club, some barracks used by a couple of Scottish regiments, and a couple of military museums. Otherwise the castle is being reconstructed to represent the 1500s era of occupation by the Stewart royal family.

The oldest building in the castle is St. Margaret's Chapel. It was a modest building with the rounded arches typical of Romanesque architecture and very small windows also typical of that period. The chapel is still in active use but since there were no services at that time I was allowed to take pictures of both the simple altar area and the small but nice stained glass windows (circa 1700s) that had been fitted to the old "wind hole" slots.


 

The War Memorial was quite moving. Traditionally a hard-fighting race, the Scottish regiments lost so many men in WWI and WWII. The memorial tried to keep alive their names, at least, and that is the least of what those of us who survive wars owe to those of us who don't.

The Queen's apartment was where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James I of England = James VI of Scotland (same guy). A regular serpentine of room displays covered the high points in the history of Scotland, which was quite interesting. At the lowest level we finally found the crown jewels of Scotland. More specifically, we found the scepter, the sword, and the crown for the King of Scotland. Actually more important than all that we found the Stone of Scone back where it belonged, in Scotland! The last time we saw it, it was in the bottom of the throne room chair for the King of England in Westminster Abbey. Apparently in the 1990s England finally relented and gave the Stone of Scone back to Scotland where it had been the crucial part of the coronation of Scottish kings for at least 500 years. Hurray for Scotland!

The Great Hall was a Victorian-era reproduction of what they thought a Great Hall would have looked like in the 1500s. It turned out, of course, to look far more like a huge, glorified, Victorian-era hunting lodge! However, a very entertaining young woman dressed in 15th Century garb gave a great and rather dramatic presentation about the travails, lives and loves of one of the noble women of that period. She moved so fast and furiously in that presentation that I had to take at least 10 shots before I finally caught her at a quiet moment and could get a non-blurry picture. Lots of fun.

We were both getting tired by that point, so we eschewed any of the military history museums in Edinburgh Castle (400 years of military history and we missed it) and just zigzagged our way back down the hill to the Waverly street station. Climbing back on board the commuter train, we were whisked back out to the suburbs in jig time. Reclaiming our car, we stopped at Tesco for a couple of slices of meat for our evening sandwiches plus some 2-liter bottles of carbonated drinks that were on sale, and packed all that in the trunk of the Passat to drive back to our hotel room. That evening we used the computer to update the journal and download the pictures while simultaneously recharging all the camera batteries, and after a little reading we once again retired for the night.

Copyright 2010 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Map of Scotland Map of England Map of Rest of Lands Epilog

August 2009
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September 2009
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