The Pick of Pics: Gullane Hash Weekend

If you've been following over at Flickr, you know I've taken something like 800 pictures so far, but most of them have been uploaded without titles or descriptions of any kind. I'm trying to remedy that now, and promise to attempt to be more disciplined about this in the future (I'll at least try to note what city the picture was taken in, ok?). And if I ever get the time I'll try to go back and label the older stuff too. But it occurred to me that it might be fun to do some really short posts picking out a few of the photos that stand out for me, or are just fun, but don't need a whole novel's worth of back-story to go with them. So I'm launching a new, probably recurring series: The Pick of Pics. Remember you can click on the photo to be taken directly to the Flickr page, where you can see a higher resolution version of any of the photos I post (if I remember to create the links). They're not super hi-res, because the time it takes to upload them in their original 7 mega-pixel format is just not feasible. If you want hi-res pictures of this stuff, come and take your own.

This first one is for the hashers:

The most picturesque check ever, right at the doorstep of what I think is a ruined 12th c. church, surrounded by a graveyard.

A day in the life, Edinburgh

I was Skyping with Karen and Steve last night (which was really nice) and one thing Karen said was that the stuff she likes most in the blog posts isn't the "then I saw this famous sight and here's the history behind it" stuff. (She's got Google for that kind of thing.) She was more interested in what life is like - how my days go by, what I eat for breakfast, that kind of thing. So in that spirit I kept track of what I was doing and thinking today, and here it is:

I wake up at about 8:30am. No alarm, which still feels a bit decadent. I often set an alarm for 8:00am, which is around when I wake up anyways, but I was so tired from the camping weekend on the beach that I didn't bother this morning. Also, I usually end up wearing one of those dopey Felix Unger eye masks things when I sleep because the sun rises at 4:45am, and sets at 9:50pm (though it stays light much later). Apparently Edinburgh is on the same latitude as Churchill, Manitoba! The dopey eye mask thing is vital.

I wander in to the communal kitchen and fix myself breakfast from groceries I bought when I hit town last Wednesday. Tesco economy Swiss Style Muesli (44p for the whole box!) and melon (which I slice up with an exacto knife I bought at the local Pound Saver, because the kitchen has exactly one knife, and it's a plastic butter knife), all mixed up with a pot of yogurt. Also a cup of tea and an orange. Carry everything back to my room and sit and email and eat.

Here's what the room looks like. A bargain for £21.50 per night.

Noodle around on the computer a bit more, and then shower in one of the two bathrooms shared by the six rooms in my "pod". The hostel is actually a university residence that's re-purposed in the summer months, which is why there are private rooms. Only one of the showers in my pod actually produces hot water, which I discovered in a chilling way on my first morning.

Get dressed, fold up the laundry that dried overnight, tweet about my plans, and head out to today's first destination - the National Museum of Scotland. I check the map in my ever-dwindling Rick Steves guide book and head towards the vicinity of the museum. Every once in a while I look over my right shoulder, and there's the castle, which is arresting and awesome. There's a guy in a suit sitting on a bench and I want to go up and shake him and say, "Do you even see that? It's freakin' fantastic! LOOK!!!"

You've seen the castle before, but it's my favourite thing in Edinburgh, so here it is again

I'm doing fine until I get to Grassmarket, when I strike off at a perfect right angle to the correct route. I wander amiably for a while, sensing that something is wrong, but not sure how to correct it. Then this thought enters my head: "Hey, another Salvation Army Hostel for Women? Weird! There was one just back there... and here's another market... wait a minute... Oh damn."

Eventually I stumble on the museum (right at the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, for anyone who's looking). The museum is free and I grab an audio guide and head down to the basement, where you're supposed to start. (More on the blessing and curse that is audioguides in another post.)

It quicky becomes apparent that I'm starting to suffer from museum fatigue, since I'm not really concentrating on the displays and thinking more about what I'm going to have for lunch. I wander around for a while longer and then go to meet up with the free guided tour that starts at 11:30am. I figure that will snap me out of it a bit.

The tour guide is ok, and he points out some interesting things in the antiquities area, but I distracted by man in the group who I'm quite sure is sporting a toupee. At least I think it's a toupee. I spend some time maneouvering so I can get a good look.*

The guide, gesturing at a very interesting stone carving. (Toupee Man not shown)

I'm also really enjoying looking at the Andy Goldsworthy pieces that are on display in the gallery, and take a bunch of pictures of them.

This one contains every bone from the skeleton of a beached pilot whale. The audio guide said it's woven together with no glue or fasteners.

I finish up the tour, though the guide doesn't even make it to the upper floors, and happily hand in my audio guide in search of lunch. Head back to the market where I purchase an outsized container of paella (£4) and sit down on a bench to eat it just as it's starting to rain. Seek shelter, tweet about lunch, and contemplate the fact that I think I'm getting a repeptitive strain injury in my left thumb from the tiny keyboard on my cell phone. Don't finish the paella, but go and pay an outrageous sum (£5.30) for a bag of mixed nuts and dried fruit, and then head back to the museum, which seems to be a good place for a rainy day.

The museum (round two) is pretty good, and I pay more attention to the exhibits I should have sought out first - the ones about the industrial revolution and steam engines and cool stuff like that. I leave at about 4:00pm to head to St. Giles Cathedral.

St. Giles is to Scotland what Westminster Abbey is to England, but by this point in the trip my Cathedral tolerance is quite low. I wander in though, and am imediately struck by how different a place this is to Westminster. It's lower and feels heavier, and the stone is darker. The arches don't soar like they do at Westminster or York Minster. The central tower is quite short and the pillars that support it are massive. It feels less refined, but that doesn't seem like a bad thing at all. It feels, in comparison to the other cathedrals I've already seen, very Scots. I donate a pound in the collection box and head to the Scott Monument.

More rain, but I pay my £3 to climb the 287 steps to the top and take lots of pictures. The stairs get quite narrow in the final stages, which makes passing strangers going the other way an arrestingly intimate encounter. At one viewing level (there are three), I run into a bevy of teenage girls who are waving and blowing kisses to some young guys on the ground. They break into giggles and squeels that leave me simultaneously contemptuous and slightly jealous.

Arthur's Seat, the Old Town, North Bridge and Waverly Station, taken from the Scott Monument

After the Scott Monument I start theshort walk back to the hostel to get ready to go for a run. Stop at a Boots (drugstore) to pick up some more hair goop, which is still on sale for £1 per tin! Also stop at Tesco and pick up more yogurt and fruit for breakfast (there's still loads of 44p meusli left) and some veggies to supplement my supper. Get wet again as it buckets down rain very briefly.

Back at the hostel I dry off, check email, munch on pricey snacks and procrastinate going running. Eventually I head out and end up having a really good run. All the hills must finally have made a difference because I run 11.3 km at a pace that's actually faster than my normal easy pace, on a route that includes some serious elevation gain. I don't go all the way up to Arthur's Seat again, but I do get up to the crags, and do not have to stop once for a walk break on the way. Even better, while running around the park I meet a runner coming the other way with a dog, and the dog is carrying the guy's water bottle for him! As I pass I say, "That's handy!" and he says, "Ah knoo!". Get back to the hostel feeling great.

Stretch, shower and then fix some supper. This is the first time I've eaten supper "in", and I make up a plate with some leftovers from the Gullane weekend - a chunk of stilton cheese and half a bun, along with a Scotch pie purchased at an artisinal butcher shop where the proprietor had such a proper Scots accent that I only understood about one word in three. I supplement with the snow peas I bought at Tesco, because I've been dangerously low on vegetables here. (Interesting side note: whereas the Canada Food Guide recommends 5-10 fruits and vegetables a day, here in the UK they must figure that's a pipe dream. Here they're just hoping for 5-a-day, and I think that must still be a struggle, especially if chips, crisps and mash don't count.)

Supper in front of the tv, just like home! (30 Rock - "The Rural Juror" episode)

After supper I wander out for a pint at a neat little pub on Fleshmarket Close (York had snickeways, Edinburgh has Closes). It's tiny and quiet and they have a newspaper with a big section on the new Harry Potter movie, so I am happy. Walk back to the hostel in the rain and do a load of sink laundry, then sit down to upload photos and blog.

Come up for air about 2 hours later. Seriously, that's how long it takes me to crank this stuff out. Uploading photos, writing stuff, adding the photos to the post (which takes about eleven steps...), previewing, checking, revising, blah blah blah. I really struggle with figuring out how divide my time between planning the next thing, experiencing the current thing, and documenting the last thing.

And now with the post safely published I can get on with figuring out which train I'm getting to the Falkirk Wheel tomorrow. Here's hoping for good weather.

* I never came to a definitive conclusion about the toupee, but I'm 99% sure that it was NOT real hair. Either way, though the guy needed some serious assistance with his do.

Running to Arthur's Seat

Almost as soon as I arrived in Edinburgh, I could sense that Scotland is different than England. The city itself seems a lot like London, but there's also an unmistakable sense of otherness here. Anyone who's seen Edinburgh Castle may know what I'm talking about. Unlike the Tower of London (the place it seems to compare most closely to historically and politically) it's got a sort of wildness about it. First of all, it's perched on top of a giant ancient volcano, so you can't really miss it. More striking though is the fact that it seems to actually grow out of the rock, or cling to it, or something.

See what I mean? Isn't that great?

Instead of carving up the rock to conform to where they wanted to build the castle, they just kind of stuck the castle onto and into the rock. There are lots of spots inside the castle walls where the rock is poking out, which I just loved.

The whole whole city just feels a bit less domesticated than England; I think I like it. Emblematic of that was the run I took today. Besides the castle, the other sight you can't escape in Edinburgh is Arthur's Seat*, which tour guides invariably refer to as a "volcanic plug". Actually there's the Seat, and another slightly lower peak, and the imposing Salisbury Crags. All of it looks like a wild chunk of Highlands plunked down in the middle of the city.

A view of Arthur's Seat, from part way up.

If this park were in England, the whole thing would be very different. The Seat - the very very top bit - would probably have a manicured lawn, and a gated formal garden at the top staffed by eager blue badge guides who would be able to quote the history of the area from approximately the time the earth's crust cooled. And the path to the top would be well-marked, with warning signs posted at regular intervals:

"Warning: Arthur's Seat is 822' high, individuals with heart problems, pregnant women, the elderly, and lazy bastards should consult a physician before attempting the climb."

And there would probably be a gift shop and a place to get a nice cup of tea.

But I'm in Scotland now. So instead I had to just plunge in without the aid of anyone wearing a badge of any colour. I guessed which path to take, and there were several. Some were switchbacks, and some were steep ascents, and some had really rough stone steps. I ended up on a path that had some quite steep sections. There was a lot of scrambling up loose gravel, and hopping over endless chunks of exposed "volcanic plug", and some more guessing. There were no signs, and there were no guides. I did run most of the way up, though I had to stop very frequently for breaks.

And then I was there.

See? And this time, with talking. Just for YOU Rob Hamilton.

The way down was even more treacherous. There were moments when I was kind of sliding on my bum down fairly sheer rock faces. (Really, I'm all for a bit of wildness and such, but would it kill them to put up a freakin' sign?) As I was contemplating my own mortality, I couldn't help but wonder how many stupid tourists fall, or twist an ankle, or break a leg up on that rock every year. I'm guessing double-digits at least.

This was the GOOD part of the path

Still, I'm glad I did it. The run up was really really hard, and I had to walk most of the descent until I got along the path that goes in front of Salisbury Crags (Interestingly, that sheer rock face of the crags is not natural. It was quarried in the early 19th c. by the Earl of Haddington - my cheesey audio guide suggested that the stone was used to cobble streets in London, but that could just be the Scottish-English thing rearing it's head, which it does here frequently, with varying degrees of amiability. Anyways, it took an act of Parliament in 1831 to stop the Earl from carting away the whole thing.)

The view of the back of the crags, taken on the way down from Arthur's Seat

When I got to the bottom, I ran all the way up the Royal Mile, which ends at the gates to Edinburgh Castle, and then I ran all the way back down again feeling pretty damned good about myself and thinking, "I am the coolest person I know right now."** And then I went and had haggis (really good) and a pint (even better).

There's more to say about Edinburgh, but that will have to wait. Tomorrow I'm planning on going to an overnight hash beach party at Gullane. Friendly Edinburgh hashers are loaning me a tent, sleeping bag and pad, and other are giving me a ride, and there's going to be a pub, and a BBQ on the beach Saturday night, and a campfire, and a hash run on Sunday and another BBQ after the run, and it all sounds great.


* Go ahead and read the Wikipedia, but don't believe for a second the bit where it says it's "quite easy to climb". Also, I really wish I'd read that article before I went out. The bit about which ascent is easiest would have been nice to know...

**Except, of course, for Rob Hamilton.

Two Days, Two Pams

I had a great couple of days in Harrogate, which is a lovely town, but doesn't have a lot to draw the RTW traveler. I was there to visit family, and in response to Rob's comment about how I keep talking about visiting family but never talk about the people themselves, I am devoting a chunk of this post to the family I visited, specifically, my grandfather's cousin. That makes her my first cousin twice removed, but for our purposes we shall simply refer to her as Pam which, happily, is her name.

It turns out that cousin Pam is quite fun. (She's the mother of Anne, my steel-nerved driving buddy and hostess in Plymouth.) Being of my grandfather's generation she's somewhere north of 80 years old, and referred to the great-grandmother I called "Nanny", as "Auntie Kit", which was just lovely.

Despite being of advancing years, Pam was happy to drive me all over the area in her tiny silver car, which was quite handy and only occasioned a few very brief rushes of traffic-related adrenalin. The evening I arrived she declared that she didn't feel like cooking and took me out to dinner at a nice country pub, so she was instantly in my good books. Then upon examining the menu she declared that she'd skip the starter (appetizer) to save room for dessert, which fits perfectly with my philosophy of leaving no dessert uneaten. We both had the sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream; it was excellent, and now joins ploughman's lunch and flapjacks on my list of favourites.

After dinner we drove to the neighbouring town of Knaresborough so I could see the ruined castle there, which was really excellent. It was another one of those moments when I was struck with how thickly the history is spread over this tiny island. Here I was in a very small town that seemed quite insignificant in most ways, yet there was a brilliant 14th c. ruined castle sitting there on a high cliff, with a lovely river valley below, and a great stone viaduct that proved to be highly photogenic.

The ruins of Knaresborough CastleThe photogenic viaduct

Ok, perhaps I was hasty in declaring that Harrogate had little to offer the RTW traveler. In fact, it has Bogs Field, whose commemorative plaque reads as follows:

"Behold Bogs Field, a wonder of the natural world where a greater number of unique mineral springs come to the surface than at any other known place on Earth! 36 of Harrogate's 88 mineral wells are found here, of which no two are alike. The waters are Magmatic or Plutonic in origin, having never existed as rain, and have flowed deep beneath the earth for 20,000 years before surfacing through vertical shafts in the strata.... Bogs Field was investigated and developed by the Victorians who piped the mineral waters to the Royal Bath Hospital and to the Pump Rooms and Baths of Low Harrogate."

So it's not enough that there are castles, Roman ruins and manor houses dotting the landscape as thick as empties at a hash run, there has to be a completely unique phenomenon of the natural world hanging around too. Did I mention I really like this country?

We had a turn around the tiny but charming Pump Room Museum, which was diverting and (strangely) had a nice collection of Egyptian antiquities along with the obligatory displays about the weird ways Victorians used the springs in "taking the cure". And of course I had to try a taste of the water from the sulphur spring which was on offer at the reception desk of the museum. It was predictably foul and made me appreciate my pint at the country pub that evening much much more.

On Tuesday I had a nice (hilly) run through Harrogate while Pam was busy having a new radiator installed in the bathroom. I say the run was hilly, but really from now on you should just assume that all runs are hilly unless otherwise noted. In fact I was pleased to discover that the hills seemed less onerous, so I hope that means I'm getting used to them.

In the afternoon we drove to the neighbouring village of Ripon where Pam had an engagement, and so left me to have a wander around on my own which suited me just fine. I visited the Ripon Cathedral which was in danger of being simply "ABC" ("Another Bloody Cathedral"), but redeemed itself by housing a brilliant 7th century crypt that was open to the public. The crypt dates to Norman times (672 AD, to be precise) and is reached by a narrow stone staircase off to the right of the nave, near the crossing (after you've been in one or two cathedrals, the architectural terms get quite familiar: nave, crossing, transept, quire, blah blah blah... ABC). The stairs led to a short, winding stone tunnel, also very narrow, and ended up in a tiny room where a holy relic would once have been displayed. Then another skinny stone corridor, and another steep, narrow stone staircase, and I popped out near the quire. Very neat.

7th c. stone steps. No, really!

Ripon Cathedral's other claim to fame is that one of the seats in the quire (15th c.) has a wood carving on it that may have been the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland". Apparently, Carroll's father was dean of the cathedral for a number of years, and speculation is that young Carroll may have got the "down the rabbit-hole" idea from this carving:

Look closely and you can see one rabbit being hunted by a fearsome winged creature, while another one (on the upper right) is disappearing into a hole, with just his rear end showing.

Ripon Cathedral was another unexpected pleasure.

Supper on Tuesday was eaten in, and accompanied by a nice bottle of red wine that I opened before the meal was quite ready. "But there's no reason we can't get into that right now," said Pam, and I was forced to agree, and drink 3 glasses over the course of the meal. And of course we each had TWO helpings of dessert. Really, I think that cousin Pam is precisely the kind of 80-year-old I hope to become.

So all in all, Harrogate and environs were lovely. It was great to meet Pam, and we had a good time chatting. When I left on Wednesday morning she said something like, "I shall be sad to see you go, it seems like you've been here much longer than two days." I think that was meant in a good way, and not in a "My God, are you still here?" way. Or perhaps she was just glad to have me around because I helped her programs the timer on her new radiator. Either way, it was a good few days.

The Pams

P.S. I've had much more opportunity to upload photos lately, so head over to the Flickr page if you haven't been in a while. I've also divided things into some sets, and am trying to annotate them too.

Another brief look back

Way back in Deal (Day 13), I spent the morning having a look around Deal, before hopping to train to Tunbridge Wells. The day I arrived in Deal I had a walk along the seaside and noticed some beach art that someone had done on the sidewalk near the rocky beach. The beach in Deal is not sand, but an enormous collection of roundy rocks - mostly in white-ish, black-ish and red-ish colours. Some clever person had taken these rocks and arranged them in a collection of pictures on the sidewalk.

See? Pretty!

I decided then that I'd come back and leave my mark, and on the morning of Day 13 I did just that. And since it forms such a nice parallel to my sidewalk chalk art at Trafalgar Square, I had to post about it.

Awww...

The rest of the morning was spent at the perfectly excellent Deal Castle. Built in 1539-40 by Henry VIII, it's certainly not the oldest or biggest castle I've seen, but it was really really fantastic. It cost 4.50 to get in, and included a really good audio guide. It was worth every penny.

A nice aerial view of the castle (happily, there was an aerial photo crane available for inquisitive tourists).

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

It is one of the most impressive of the Device Forts or Henrician Castles built by Henry VIII between 1539 and 1540 as an artillery fortress to counter the threat of invasion from Catholic France and Spain. It is shaped like a Tudor rose, being perfectly symmetrical, with a low, circular keep at its centre. Around the circumference of the keep are six bastions, with a further series of six bastions in the curtain wall, one of which serves as the gatehouse. All the outer walls of the castle and bastions are rounded to both provide strength and to deflect shot more efficiently than flat walls. Over 200 cannon and gun ports were set within the walls and the entire structure was completely surrounded by a very deep, wide moat.

It's really well preserved, and you can walk along the outer wall, and explore all levels of the keep inside, and even go down into the lower level gun emplacements, which was my favourite part (though sadly not good for photography). The lower level had a dark, damp corridor that ran all the way around the keep and you could walk the whole circumference of it, through deep puddles, and look at where the cannons used to be placed, and at the smoke holes in the ceiling, and it was all just great.

Me, at the Castle