Edinburgh from the Air
Recently I did something I haven't done since I was about 8 or so, climbed to the top of the Scott Monument, the 200 foot tall, neo-Gothic rocket which honours Sir Walter Scott. The edifice was completed in 1846 and is covered in sculpture of characters from his many books and it is a fair old walk up increasingly narrow, spiral, stone stairs - by the last section the walls were so narrow they were rubbing against me shoulders and it gave the impression of being deep underground in a stone vault or dungeon, which is an odd feeling when you know right outside that stone wall is a drop of 200 feet...
View from the top is amazing, right across Edinburgh and right out to the hills of Fife to the North, over the Firth of Forth (you can even see the distinctive shape of the Forth Bridge) with the Georgian New Town in the forgeground, laid out in grids unlike the sprawling and winding streets of the Old Town, out to sea to the east, the extinct volcano of Arthur's Seat, then round to the tall, narrow buildings of the Old Town on Castle Ridge, with the Pentland Hills beyond the city also visible (you can even see the white markings of the dry ski slope on one of the hills), the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery down below on the Mound between the east and west Princes Street Gardens (which once upon a time was a big, stagnant loch protecting the Castle's flank) and Edinburgh Castle itself. I'll get some of the photos up on Flickr soon, but I shot a 360 degree video view walking round the uppermost gallery (apologies, YouTube lowered the quality rather badly from the original):
View from the top is amazing, right across Edinburgh and right out to the hills of Fife to the North, over the Firth of Forth (you can even see the distinctive shape of the Forth Bridge) with the Georgian New Town in the forgeground, laid out in grids unlike the sprawling and winding streets of the Old Town, out to sea to the east, the extinct volcano of Arthur's Seat, then round to the tall, narrow buildings of the Old Town on Castle Ridge, with the Pentland Hills beyond the city also visible (you can even see the white markings of the dry ski slope on one of the hills), the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery down below on the Mound between the east and west Princes Street Gardens (which once upon a time was a big, stagnant loch protecting the Castle's flank) and Edinburgh Castle itself. I'll get some of the photos up on Flickr soon, but I shot a 360 degree video view walking round the uppermost gallery (apologies, YouTube lowered the quality rather badly from the original):
Click to view