City to country

Friday 22 June – Edinburgh

Rest day!

After a week of cloud, it was great to see the sun back again. But before we could go exploring we had a couple of mundane duties to take care of, finding the local laundrette then getting new insoles for Peter’s boots. Basics taken care of, it was off to have a mini-explore of Edinburgh.

We really like Edinburgh! The word that springs to mind is ‘handsome’, the old and the not-so-old existing side by side. We enjoyed the inner-city streetscapes of three-storey buildings with a bewildering assortment of shops and cafes and services at street level.

But our first destination was Edinburgh castle, high on a rocky promontory commanding stunning views over the city,. What stood out most was the complete absence of tall buildings; the New Town area north of Princes Street was almost a uniform height, lending a really pleasing and almost European feeling.

The castle is apparently the most-visited place outside London and we could see why. It wasn’t just the dramatic setting; within a small area is packed so much history and grandeur that its intensity is quite, quite stunning. The military and the regal is intertwined in a way we’ve not seen before.

And, quite by accident, Peter learned more about one of his ancestors.

One of the buildings, home to the Dragoons, had a display of their history. One of the exhibits showed examples of the medals given out during various conflicts, including the First World War. Quite coincidentally, just a week ago Peter’s aunt in Morpeth had showed him a couple of medals belonging to his mother’s father that the family believed were from the war – and here, in Edinburgh, he saw identical versions! A mystery resolved.

We wandered down the Royal Mile, an interesting area steeped in history though now lined with ways to part tourists from their money (not us though!) Tired and weary, we caught the bus back to our lodgings, later to enjoy a delicious Italian.

Distance walked: who knows?

Whiskies sampled – just the one (Aberlour)

Within the castle walls:

Saturday 23 June – Uphall to Polmont

Originally we were to walk from Kirknewton to Linlithgow. In fact, our journey was somewhat different!

After a great Skype call to some of our NZ friends, we caught the bus into central Edinburgh and then the train to Uphall Station, the point we’d got to on Thursday. A 3km walk took us to the Union Canal, which we’d be following on and off for the next couple of days.

Regular readers of this blog will know of our deep love for canalside walking, so we were excited indeed to spend//// most of today doing just that. Though cool, the day was dry, an ideal walking day, one to savour as the forecast was for hot weather (27 to 28’C) in a couple of days. Much of the canal was lined with trees, resplendent in their foliage. The path was actually a long-distance cycle route so it was built to a high standard and was great to walk on. By 2.30pm we’d arrived at Linlithgow, so it was time for Plan C!

Originally we were to stop there, at the West Port Hotel, but tomorrow would be a gruelling 32km/20 miles and we knew it would not be fun. Our cunning plan was this: we spotted that both Linlithgow and the next station of Polmont were on the same train line, so we dropped off our packs at our hotel, walked on pack-less for some 7km to Polmont and caught the train back to Linlithgow. Tomorrow we will simply catch the train back to Polmont and start walking, turning the 32km day into a much better 25km day. Not only that, we were we back at our hotel by 5pm.

Distance today:  25km / 15.5 miles

Union Canal: