1 April: The first mountain & more weather woes
Nick at the base of Arthur's Seat
The coolest thing
about Arthur’s Seat is that it’s one of the proposed locations for Camelot
(thus: Arthur’s Seat). Other than that,
it has some pretty cool ruins, it’s rugged and its base is probably 500m from
Fergus’ place. We didn’t have an excuse
not to go.
Look at those locks. Such Scottish.
While we were standing at the base of the mountain, Nicholas said, "it's our first mountain climb in Scotland."
"It's hardly a mountain," I replied. Arthur's Seat is about 500m (probably) high.
"Look! That's a freaking mountain," said Nick, point at the mountain (above).
The first step to effectively climbing a mountain is to tie your shoelaces. Here's me demonstrating this very important process.
While relatively dry, the climb to the top was extremely windy. We'd read reviews on the climb and people noted it was a pretty easy climb and a pretty quick one. We would've gone much faster if Aeolus wasn't trying to kill us. My goretex jacket turned me into a human sail and I kept getting caught on the wind and physically bowled over. It was nuts. The sight was really lovely when we got to the top though, and we can see why Arthur was supposedly so fond of it. From one side, Edinburgh stretches out in front of you, all strangely layered upon itself. From the other, you can see the North Sea (also known as the bringer of the deadly wind).
We needed to sit down and have a small rest once we had reached the top, mostly so that we could avoid being knocked over. I got the best seat in the house.
I am Arthur! I am on his seat!
From Arthur's Seat, you can see a little ruin. More on that later.
Just as we reached the top of Arthur's Seat, a rainbow stretched its way over the cliff below.
Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat. On the left you can see Edinburgh, and on the right you can see the sea.
Nicholas being an explorer
Our grassy spot (that's Arthur's Seat in the background)
We kept on walking, down and up the smaller mountain/cliff beside Arthur's Seat. This one was much less crowded than Arthur's Seat (which was still relatively quiet, just lots of locals and their many, many dogs). Some insane people were jogging up and down in minimal clothing (how?). One such man stopped to allow me to awkwardly clamour down the rocky 'short cut' we had found. Perhaps he was just looking for an excuse to take a break because he was puffing.
"Hello!" I said.
"Hallooo!" he said. "Did you get to the top? How's the weather up there?"
I explained that it was windy and I mustn't have sounded very Scottish in doing so, because he asked how long we were in Scotland. He was from an isle of the north western coast of Scotland. He said it's beautiful. I wanted to tell him 'of course it's beautiful, it's SCOTLAND' but I didn't.
We found ourselves a cozy, grassy spot to sit, sheltered from the wind by a big mossy boulder. We sat here for about an hour, lamenting our idiocy in not bringing any snacks to eat, but also discussing that we should go and check out the ruin.
A better shot of the view from our relaxing spot
The sleet-bearing cloud
In typical Edinburgh fashion, the weather started to turn. Just before it did, Nicholas (naively) said, "wow, we've had such good weather today!"
"Don't speak too soon," I said. "Look at that cloud coming in."
"It'll be fine!"
"It'll be sleeting in two minutes!" I joked.
It started sleeting exactly then.
Thirty seconds after the sleet begun, it ended and the sun came out. If we hadn't got a picture of the cloud rolling in, you could've thought the whole thing had never happened.
The ruin turned out to be a chapel/possibly a skin clinic of some kind from the 15th century. That was pretty cool. One lady was sitting in the ruin having her lunch, which was pretty inconsiderate to the tourists, really. Another lady was sitting by the ruin in prayer, which was a forgivable offence, seeing as it was potentially a chapel and all. I used really advanced photographic techniques to omit them all from the photos (even the Chinese tourists with their selfie sticks).
The ruin. You can see the lady praying on the very righthand side.
The ruin from by the loch at the base of the hill
On our way back to Fergus' house, we stumbled across an old well (we thought it might've led to some other kind of dimension or something. It's very easy for this to be a logical conclusion in Scotland. It's pretty magical). We hung out there for a bit and Nicholas attempted to fish manky coins out of the bowl in front of the well until I reprimanded him enough. I took some not-so-macro shots of all the moss in the well with our not-so-macro lens.
We popped back by Fergus' place to have some lunch and had great intentions to somewhere else in the afternoon, but my '20 minute power nap' turned into 3 hours and then we just watched some more Doctor Who on the Horror channel on Fergus' cable TV. The Horror channel has this weird woman who plays a bastardised Elvira, without the hair, introducing you to the next program. She's not as sexy as Elvira either. British TV is actually quite weird.
Mary's Well
Moss
Moss V2
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