Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh

31 March 2012

A week ago, as the last days of nice weather were coming to a close in Scotland, I was getting really anxious and just needed to get out of town and be outside doing something. I looked into taking a 5 hour train ride out to the town of Mallaig, an industrial fishing town that also serves as the gateway to the Inner Hebrides. Even though the train ride is rated as one of the most beautiful train rides in the world, and even though the ride brings you over the famous viaduct used in the second Harry Potter film, I decided I would leave that for another weekend when I had people to go with. That, and poor planning on my part just made it near impossible.

Instead, I decided on Saturday morning to head over to Edinburgh and hike Arthur's Seat, the top of a mini-mountain right in the center of town. The mountain, situated in Holyrood Park, is not terribly tall (see the photos for scale), but it is the eroded and weathered center of an old volcano. Originally used as the hunting grounds for the Royal Family while they stayed at their official residence in Edinburgh, Holyrood House, the park is now open to the public and on nice days is teeming with people taking walks below the craigs, along the lochs, and all over the grassy fields.

My train left around noon, but I got to the Glasgow City Center with some time to pick up a guide book or two on Scotland, and then a bit later, I got into Edinburgh's Waverly Station around half-one. Armed with my camera and sandwiches in my hiking backpack, I made my way down Edinburgh's High Street, past Holyrood House, and the new (and fairly unremarkable) parliament building, to the entrance to the park.

The weather couldn't have been nicer. The sky was blue with only a few clouds and a warm breeze in the air. And everyone was out. I'm not entirely sure how packed Holyrood Park usually is on a nice day, but it was almost impossible to not constantly be passing people. There are plenty of walks in the Park that are fairly easy to do, but most of the established trails have some pretty steep sections over rough ground. The up-side to that, though, is that it didn't take long before I was up above the city skyline with beautiful views of the city and the Firth of Forth (the ocean inlet alongside which Edinburgh is built).

The Park was beautiful, too. bright yellow flowers were in bloom and birds of all sorts were chirping or singing or cooing while rabbits hopped in and out of the bushes. While there are designated trails in the Park, people just kind of have free reign over where they want to walk, and it was really fun watching the singular person walking along the top of cliffs, or the guy playing catch with his dog in the grassy top of another hill, or the kids running around the little lochs in the park.

Since I had all day, I took my time and walked everywhere I wanted to go, but eventually, I made my way up to the top of Arthur's Seat where I found a nice little seat of my own in the rocks and had my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Throughout the hike, every now and then, and while I was eating lunch, I'd catch a tune being played on some bagpipes somewhere, carried on the wind. It was very faint and I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it only added to my surroundings: I was definitely in Scotland! With this as my view from Arthur's Seat, I didn't think it could get any better:

Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park. Edinburgh Castle is seen to the left of the photo with the old town lining High Street down to Holyhead House and Holyhead Abbey at the bottom right of the photo. Even in the distance, you can see the world-famous Fourth Bridge over the Firth of Forth, a bridge that once held the record for the the longest single-cantilevered bridge in the world. Holyrood Park is in the foreground of the photo while Regents Park is seen just right of center.

It was probably around 4:30pm when I started heading down from Arthur's Seat and walked through the rest of the park. I noticed a blister forming on my foot, and so I wanted to get off my feet pretty quickly. I made my way back up High Street all the way up to the gates of the Castle (a place I still have yet to visit), but I wanted to see some familiar sights from when I was last in Edinburgh, with my high school choir's tour of the British Isles in 2002. On that trip, we stayed in dorms at the University of Edinburgh (which I saw from Holyrood Park) and performed a concert in St. Giles Cathedral, right on High Street. It was really neat to see those places again and even though it was ten years ago since I was on that trip, it seemed like yesterday that we were getting our nighttime ghost tour of Edinburgh and tour down to the depths of Mary Kings Close, where victims of the plague were locked up in a dark and dingy dungeon-like room, well beneath the streets above.

My foot was kind of bothering me, and I didn't want to do too much more walking, so I started to head back to the train station. I was hungry, though, and while I was walking down a narrow set of stairs, I noticed a very small little pub in the alley (the Halfway House, which was Edinburgh's Pub of the Year in 2009) and since only two or three people were inside, I decided to stay a bit longer and enjoy sitting over a pint or two. But it was eventually time to go, and I got back on the train with plenty of time to spare in the day, and actually arrived back at my flat in Glasgow no later than 8:30. So it wasn't really that long of a day, but I was successful in getting my outdoor walk, my day-trip out of Glasgow, and a little more sightseeing and city-exploring!