View from the Top

It was a little colder today, but that didn’t stop me from accomplishing that task which I set myself in the blog yesterday; to scale the large hill in the Holyrood Park. The little map I’ve been using, which labels forty-odd places at which to shop, eat, or be entertained, shows only a sliver of the edge of the park before it ends in a border of ads. So I had a general direction, but no sense of the place.

First I climbed another hill, a smaller one, that I had seen rising between buildings on my regular walk into the busy district. This is Carlton Hill, which features a staircase and paved pathway to the top, where one can look at a few monuments and oversee the city—or look south toward the great crag and all 251m of Andrew’s Seat, rocks which would tower over the city if they weren’t set in the midst of comfortable acreage of grassy highlandish terrain. Once I got to the top of Carlton and saw this, I thought, the heck with this hill, I want THAT one.

It was some job finding it, because as you may know (or will soon learn as I harp on it continuously upon my return) none of the streets here are straight. Grids were invented after Europe was invented. When I see the city maps of Oxford, London, or Edinburgh, I see no sense behind it, in other words, nonsense. Try it, see for yourself. (Let alone the fact that street names change every block. I’m used to that now, and it really couldn’t bring any more order into the system if it were otherwise.)

Once I had traversed the web of street between the two hills, I could clearly see the crag rising above me, but I saw no signs that said, Park Entrance This Way, or any such thing. I stopped to ask some policemen if I was headed correctly and they said yes, just keep going, on up into the hills if I liked. I guess I expected a sign-in/sign-out thing, or a stop-to-make-sure-you’ve-got-what-you-need station, or a ranger, or something. Nope. I could hardly find the park bathroom, but I did. That was the extent of my preparation.

The rest was just hiking. I don’t know how long it took, probably an hour and some altogether. I aimed for the higher peak first, and wound around on various branching paths until I got there. Since it was all uphill, I steamed on up, and at the top, sweaty under my six layers, I didn’t stick around in the wind. Plus, there were a lot of people there with me. I tried to figure out how to get to the crag, a lower area with a better view and less people, and took a more direct route than was probably advisable. I did a little slipping and sliding (it was cold enough that where there hadn’t been sun very long, there was frost, which makes rocks slippery), some sitting on my hands and lowering myself down—stuff that I did that time I was lost in the Cascades. But I wasn’t lost, found a better path eventually and made the crag in short order. I took some pictures, a few panorama movies. From these peaks, one can see all of Edinburgh’s old stuff, like the castle and the churches and generally all of what I would call ‘old town’, which in a place like Europe can be very old. But to the opposite direction, one can see the Firth of Forth, the water which Edinburgh fronts. From the big hill, you can even make out one of the Isle of May, which I believe is one of the Hebrides. It reminded me of Chicago, it reminded me of San Francisco, it reminded me of Port Townsend. It was some view.

Then I climbed down and walked to High Street, where I (finally) bought a scarf from a very jovial shopkeeper. I asked him how he would recommend wearing it and he said, “There was actually something about scarves in the paper today.” I was a little surprised to see, in the pages turned on our way to the scarf article, some full-page full-frontal nudity. Clearly I wasn’t in Kansas.

As much as I’ve complained about prices here, I was also surprised today by the price of my recovery dinner. I went across the street from the hostel to a little shop and bought, for 56p, a serious amount of Brussels sprouts and some carrots. Sprouts cost too much where I shop in America, so I rarely get them, or I get them frozen. But these were fresh, and best of all, I didn’t need a knife to prepare them. I added them to my recovery meal—as you might imagine, I had a hankering for some pasta after all that walking.

Tomorrow I’ll hit the museums, have one more bigdeliciousexcellent pasta party, and hop on the night bus to London. Then I travel for 24 hours, and then I finally stop traveling. But you’ll hear from me again before that.