Good morning! The B&B we were in was lovely. The lady of the house had broken her ankle just before we arrived which meant she couldn't clean our rooms or the bathroom. We didn't care much as long as it was warm and the bed was soft and the shower was hot and the breakfast was good.
Today we wanted to climb Arthur's seat. So early morning we set foot to the hills of Holyrood park in the centre of Edinburgh and pretty soon we already could look out over the city. Here is a good walking map of Holyrood park.
Edinburgh is actually built around a volcano. A dead one, but still... The views while going up were great.
Or even greater!
Of course there is not just the hill itself to be seen. We were about to visit a few sites on the way. The second place of interest soon showed itself. However close it looks, it still took nearly 20 minutes climbing to get there.
On our way up we passed St Anthony’s Well. The boulder above it is an ancient stone as described here and here. It is said to have healing powers and it used to be a place of worship in days long gone. A wonderful little historic site with so much more to it then one would think at first site. Who made this? Who put the stone there and why? Did the stone have a purpose? Where did the water come from?
And then there was St Anthony's chapel. A small ruin with records dating back to 1426 when the pope paid for its repairs. It's demise is believed to have started around the year 1560, what a pity. Now it just feeds the imagination.
The information board tells about the history of the little chapel.
Marjolein standing in the doorway of what once was the entrance to St Anthony's chapel. For how long have people walked through that door? Did anybody live here? Who belonged here? Was it safe and secure? What happened here during the day?
And then it was up, up, up again.
Some parts of the path were actually quite steep.
The views were fantastic.
The wind today was insane. At the top of Arthur's seat there's a landmark. We climbed up to make a picture but we had to hold on for dear life not to be blown off. Since my camera was not on a strap I was a little worried ;-)
The view over Edinburgh as seen from the Arthur's seat landmark. The wind was so strong that I had to wait 5 minutes before stepping down because I would have been blown over while standing on the one leg. Little did I know that by this time Marjolein had already been blown over, the result of that is shown in the very last picture of this blog post. It was an awesome climb with fantastic views. The wind was a bit dangerous though so we decided to not have lunch here but to go down a bit first ;-)
Beautiful views while walking down again.
We walked down the piper's walk which was a small and narrow path. Funnily enough we didn't encounter a living soul on this part of the walk.
Marjolein posing in a spot that reminded us a lot of our walk along the "Sentier des douaniers" in Brittany last summer.
More great views.
And then the fourth site of interest showed up: Hutton's section. This is an old dig site where a geologist called James Hutton developed the ideas founding todays geology.
The site was produced long ago when the volcano here was still active and tore and pushed the rock apart making it show the layers of different materials it's made of.
All the different layers are clearly visible here.
There is also a repository of iron ore. This particular bit reminds me a lot of the mining spots in World of Warcraft ;-)
After having lunch at Hutton's section we continued our journey down again.
This is a piece of ore that I "found".
After a quick visit to the B&B for a shower we walked back in to town to have a few drinks at a session that our friend Chic (bald guitar player in the back) had arranged in a pub called "The Hebrides", which I mentioned in my earlier post about Mary King's close, the close that used to exit right next to this very pub.
The session was great!
Chic having a chat with Min Ha and her sister.
It was a great day. We have seen lots of interesting sites, had a great walk and awesome views followed by drinks with friends and wonderful songs played by good musicians and (not pictured) fantastic fish and chips in The Doric.
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