Day 3 : 2025 07 01 Edinburgh, walking tour and Castle

Time to hit Edinburgh straight on, the time honoured tradition of the free walking tour. Where you walk too far and learn so much about a place, only enough to realize there is even more to learn. You get the beginnings of knowledge that really only lead to more questions and next thing you know it's 2am and you are down a deep rabbit hole on Wikipedia learning about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite uprising.

We head to the most touristy of the touristy spots. Edinburgh being a UNESCO heritage site, that makes it the most touristy of tourist spots, well, most of it, really. But the main area is the Royal mile. The ridge that leads from the Edinburgh Castle (time honoured military installation) down to the Holyrood house Palace (far more decorative, where royalty stays when it visits). And along that ridge is all manner of shops, mostly tourist traps, but some genuine shops. You can generally tell how authentic it is by how much more expensive it is. To buy anything from these shops one must engage in the sort of self deception that enables people to buy a Bowflex or a 'really, when you space it out over 20 years an affordable timeshare in Florida'.

It's also a place that is built to sell things you would wear when it's a wet cold. You know the kind of deep deep cold that makes your bones ache and that generally makes the idea of haggis, blood sausage, and shortbread (hear me out, what if the main component of this food is just shortening?) seem like a good idea.

Scotland being a land that has been through many upheavals, but also a place that had, during times of emigration, an unusually high level of literacy and education. Which resulted in many of the big inventors and thinkers of past few hundred years being Scottish. High education plus the desperation of eking out you living, exiled from your own land does marvels for one's motivation.

One forgets how much the Scots have contributed to ideas and inventions in the world. And then one crosses a simple statue like this, oh yeah, only Adam Smith, the inventor of economics (this might not be exactly true, but for someone who's entire understanding of economics is Supply and Demand, and maybe "The Grapes of Wrath", it's true enough).

And we meet our tour guide, the ever knowledgeable, subtly opinionated, and deeply humanistic Graeme. While we learn lots of very interesting stories about Edinburgh, we are also constantly reminded to go here or cluster there, to minimize the impact we have on the locals just trying to get on with their day. There is a undercurrent of caring for people and history that threads through all the stories. AS well as, just as I'd hoped, a deep wellspring of suspicion and general dislike of the English. As a political force an entity, not the English people as a whole, which would be ridiculous (I say this as a Canadian, I'm not sure if this is actually true).

(as an aside, during one of these nights I did watch the hilariously historically inaccurate adventure, "Braveheart", with my son. The main takeaway I wanted him to get from it is : the Scots generally don't like the English, for good reason)

Graeme

Graeme would delve into all sorts of nerdery like this building, Lady Stair's House, home of the Scottish Writer's Museum, and talk about the many architectural features that made it Scottish Baronial (tourelles, battlements, asymmetric, etc).

A close

The best bit was wandering into these closes (an alley that lead to a larger court). And then learning the courts are really just where a larger building used to be, but burnt down/got torn down from neglect. The history of Edinburgh is vast and variegated as one would expect for a city of a thousand or so years. But much of what we focussed on was a city that, cramped from a wall that kept out impending invasion, lead to rich living with poor and just a hyper dense city. Waste thrown on the streets, waves of pestilence which regularly cleaned out the population. A city of stone and brick that groaned and stressed under its own success.

So eventually, as does happen, the rich decide they don't very much like living with the poor and decide to move on (to the newer part of town, called, imaginatively, New Town) from Old town. And Old Town, or what most people think of as the most historic part of Edinburgh is, close to the Castle, and where the Royal Mile is, fell into disrepair.

Scottish Writer's Museum

Patrick Geddes home

My favourite story of this tour is about Patrick Geddes. Faced with the decaying and neglected part of Edinburgh, he decided to fix up his part of it. Then he helped his neighbours, and their neighbours, and basically led to the revitalization of Old town and the preservation of this extremely historic part of Edinburgh. It was a case of idealism plus action actually doing a real thing. Something you see in a feel good movie but hardly ever suspect of being possible. (His was an idea of 'conservative surgery' vs the gridiron plan, or : targeted revitalization versus one huge massive megaproject to improve people's lives).

He also showed us this massive gothic spire, which I thought was surely some religious monument but was instead a monument to the writer Sir Walter Scott. It's also, according to Wikipedia is the largest monument to a writer in the world. The interesting thing about it was it was originally build when there was smog and coal dust and the sort of particulates in the air that make 34 seem like a ripe old age. And these pollutants got into the stone and blackened the stone to the imposing charcoal and ash look it has today. If someone had told me that monument was erected in honour of Trench Warfare, or Miner's Lung, I would not have been surprised. The interesting thing about this is there is a current debate on whether to clean it or not. You can see the lower.. (I could be clever and look up the architectural terms for it, but that would be both dishonest and not help in the description in the slightest unless you were an architecture major, in which case I'd probably get the term subtly, but disastrously wrong).. horizontal part, is cleaned up successfully, during a test run.

The debate is fascinating, because, obviously you do not want a monument that looks like a clarion call to Heavy Metal and Ritual sacrifice (I mean, probably not), but on the other hand, on the OTHER hand, as Graeme so rightly puts it, once it's cleaned, there is no way you can get the right conditions in the air (debilitating air pollution driven by greed and shoddy science) to get that colour again.

Monument to Walter Scott

And then we are off again, walking about Old Town, and come across some beautiful townhouses, which were built by our hero Patrick Geddes, who erected THESE to attract some rich money back to Old Town to fund good things (I assume like gardens and wider streets). Ever the pragmatist.

This is a shot of an old church that is now.. a mall? It's something decided non-religious. This is fascinating since so much of the history of Scotland I've read in snatches here and there is indeed about religion. The Coventers, specifically. However, now the majority of Scots do not practice any religion leaving these fantastic gothic spires to house, I dunno, let's say a major Sweater Cooperative. Yes, those windows are red. Yes, that makes this church spire extremely metal and hard core and rad. Yes, that's probably why they are still that colour.

Most Metal Church I've seen so far.

Looks straight out of a dystopian low budget 90's sci fi
movie where all the bad guys were poorly
modified motorcycle helmets.

Edinburgh Castle, a military symbol that has switched hands time and again and once a year, for the month of August, has a Military Tattoo. Which is drums and bagpipes and marching and apparently swells one's heart with patriotic fervour if one is so inclined. But the interesting bit about this is the that dire, Orwellian super structure of soul-shattering tackiness, the stadium.

Since all of Edinburgh is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and because basic taste, not even good taste, just any taste at all, would forbid having that bloody monstrosity up covering the sight to the Castle, they have to spend months putting it up. Then having the Military Tattoo for a month straight in August, then spending months taking it down. It's a testament to ingenuity of mankind, one might think optimistically. There is certainly a world in which they just leave that thing up, so I suppose we need to be grateful for small mercies.

Calling back to the general attitude of Scots toward to the British Political machine, which shows through every once in a while through the tour, and for which I'm grateful, Graeme points out the one thing that is wrong with the picture (besides the stadium, we are assuming). It is, of course, the British flag flying over the castle.

From here you can see the beginning of the massive ridge of mountain that makes up the Royal mile. Hard stone that stayed upright as a glacier swept thie whole area clean, leaving the ridge, and this vantage point. Fromthis was built the If Not Impossible Then Pretty Damn Difficult to assault Castle. Then the town then city that has been in existence for a few thousand years. It's funny how geology, ice ages, and relative hardness of rocks can shape civilization.

Yes, I am the Front Of
the Class asking for
Extra Credit Work type
of walking tour customer

I ask questions about the cannons I see, (decorative, meant mainly to impress visiting royals, salvaged from some wreck or other), hoping to get some Napoleonic Naval history in there somewhere.

He tells many more interesting stories, but this one is the best of them. His mother, was a nurse, and an excellent one, I do not remember the exact sub-specialty she was in, but she did well enough in it to get an award from the queen. His father, knowing, perhaps, his son's politics, and perhaps sharing in them himself, let him know to be on his best behaviour, since the Queen's bodyguard was tank of a man and would have him out on his ear at the slightest provocation.

The day comes and the meet the Queen and the Queen's body guard comes into view and he's apparently the smallest, lightest, oldest man to ever hold a military position. His position, as his father knew, was symbolic and more of an honor to hold, after, one would presume, decades upon decades of service, and just before dementia got a really good foothold.

Graeme, of course, fought the rising urge to absolutely break down laughing the entire time, looking at the shrunken, ancient bodyguard standing at attention. His father knew how work himself up over it. It was a master class in dad humour.

Alas, we must eventually say goodbye, and excellent walking tour done, and we continue the Family tour. Which is, as you may know, my wife finding pretty places she's heard about and marching us there to gaze about and take more pictures of them.

Somehow we find ourselves in Portobello. I think our son just wanted to see the beach. Now, maybe it's my taste in movies, or my general ignorance, but I assumed a beach in Scotland would be craggy with large boulders, rocks, moss, lichen. Maybe rusty chains an anchors? Something really.. rugged. Possible an old saltpeter factory (no I don't know what that is but it sounds like something that would be there). I try to dissuade my son, so ignorant, I'm ignorant of my ignorance. But hey, he gets a say on where we wander and take pictures too. So we take the transit and find ourselves in Portobello, or Porty.

And absolutely delightful beachside area with sandy sandy beaches and a charming boardwalk. There was also a magnificent industrial pottery kiln with even more magnificent plaques and I took no pictures of them and I can only reason that it sent me down a pretty deep dive into Wikipedia about bricks and Portobello mushrooms (no relation to the town, interestingly), but thankfully, finished that up before 2am.