First time in Scotland -- Edinburgh! (Part 2)
[WJ here!]
E D I N B U R G H ! ! !
Having slept pretty late the night before, woke just about in time for lunch. After a leisurely meal of pasta at home (i.e. WY’s flat), we set off on a mission to locate the rock-climbing place before dark!
WY had been there twice previously, but since that was by taxi and I wasn’t willing to cough up the moolah, I suggested we go by bus. So bus we did...
...Although we almost gave up after waiting nearly an exasperating hour for it! When it finally showed up though, it was pretty efficient and got us to our stop virtually on the dot!
That wasn’t the end of our problems... in fact, it was only the beginning! It turned out that our bus stop was somewhere on the outskirts of Edinburgh, in some rural residential area eerily reminiscent of B-grade horror movies that always seem set in some “sleepy little town” in the middle of nowhere.
Seeing literally NOBODY in sight, we decided to play it safe and take photos of the surrounding area so we would (HOPEFULLY) be able to navigate our way back.
’Tis slightly worrying that the tree looks rather Godot-esque...
Since the place was so ulu that it didn’t even appear on my map, we started walking as per WY’s printed-from-the-internet instructions. The place was so - there really is no better word for it - sleepy and Enid-Blyton-y / Agatha-Christie-ish. There was just this olde-worlde, slightly removed from reality and modern time feel about it. I half expected to see five children and a dog wandering around...
Look! Horsey!
How ever so quaint!
We might have got lost there forever in that little village-y place and be doomed to become small Asian tourist ghosts wandering the streets for eternity if not for a helpful man who had just come home from goodness knows where, presumably to join in the general sleepiness of his neighbours. Anyway, he directed us to follow the canal, there’ll be a path on the left with a sign, can’t miss it.
Err. Okay. If you say so...
Here’s the view from the bridge over the canal...
And the aptly named Bridge Inn, which I wouldn’t have minded entering, actually
And look! Ducks!
And of course, no SLV (Sleepy Little Village) would be complete without its local church and graveyard!
Road less travelled? (Well, at least by small Asian tourists...)
Problem with the road less travelled is, well, it’s not well-travelled enough to warrant tarring or cobblestones... So we were soon doing a Duke-of-Edinburgh-esque trek through mud and puddles - aptly enough, whilst actually IN Edinburgh!
Beautiful, innit? You can see where Keats and the others are coming from...
Look! A rainbow!
FINALLY reached our destination after what seemed like AGES trekking through beautiful if rather UTTERLY DESERTED countryside. We were rather dubious at first, since it seemed most of the signs we encountered were of the bright yellow “KEEP OUT” / “DANGER” variety, accompanied by barbed wire and steel wire fences. It was virtually a scene taken out from Jurassic Park, or one of those movies where just after the hapless victim traveller chooses to go down one path of the fork in the road, the sign falls down to reveal some imminent danger in the path the traveller chooses...
...But obviously not, since I’m alive and well enough to post this!
The rock climbing place, when we finally figured out how to get in the front entrance and not the back where all the wire and “DANGER” signs were, was AMAZING. It was huge - far larger than 1Utama’s Camp5 climbing gym - and just... well, see for yourself!
Climbing fans, be jealous!
It’s apparently the world’s best rock climbing facility, so it was no wonder that we spent a few happy hours there. Unfortunately, since it was basically a disused rock quarry converted into a climbing centre by roofing it over, it was pretty darn cold, and I found myself not climbing as well as I usually do. Rather a disappointment, but stiiilll!
It was pitch black when we decided to stop - not hard to though, considering Edinburgh seems to get dark at 4pm. Walking back along that deserted PITCH BLACK path became practically impossible, so we cabbed it back (in a cab driven by a nice garrulous old man who became even more voluble once he found out we were Malaysians, since he’d gone there for his 40th wedding anniversary just a few weeks ago).
Upon touchdown in Edinburgh (pardon the mixed metaphor), we set off in time for a ghost tour! It wasn’t so much supernaturally scary as a fascinatingly entertaining medieval history session along with getting to see torture instruments that had actually been used in the past plus a visit to the underground city where quite a vast number of unfortunate souls happened to die horribly. But then again, most European medieval history is delightfully gruesome.
A corner of one of the underground vaults which is supposedly good for sightings of light orbs... see anything ghostly?
After the ghost tour, we had to make it back through the city to WY’s flat. Since we were rather surprisingly un-spooked, we took the opportunity to enjoy the city by night and savour the nippingly cold walk home.
Edinburgh skyline by night
I think blue lights are far nicer than the normal yellow ones, don’t you?
And that was my second day in Edinburgh!
Up next: Day 3 in Edinburgh!
E D I N B U R G H ! ! !
Having slept pretty late the night before, woke just about in time for lunch. After a leisurely meal of pasta at home (i.e. WY’s flat), we set off on a mission to locate the rock-climbing place before dark!
WY had been there twice previously, but since that was by taxi and I wasn’t willing to cough up the moolah, I suggested we go by bus. So bus we did...
...Although we almost gave up after waiting nearly an exasperating hour for it! When it finally showed up though, it was pretty efficient and got us to our stop virtually on the dot!
That wasn’t the end of our problems... in fact, it was only the beginning! It turned out that our bus stop was somewhere on the outskirts of Edinburgh, in some rural residential area eerily reminiscent of B-grade horror movies that always seem set in some “sleepy little town” in the middle of nowhere.
Seeing literally NOBODY in sight, we decided to play it safe and take photos of the surrounding area so we would (HOPEFULLY) be able to navigate our way back.
’Tis slightly worrying that the tree looks rather Godot-esque...
Since the place was so ulu that it didn’t even appear on my map, we started walking as per WY’s printed-from-the-internet instructions. The place was so - there really is no better word for it - sleepy and Enid-Blyton-y / Agatha-Christie-ish. There was just this olde-worlde, slightly removed from reality and modern time feel about it. I half expected to see five children and a dog wandering around...
Look! Horsey!
How ever so quaint!
We might have got lost there forever in that little village-y place and be doomed to become small Asian tourist ghosts wandering the streets for eternity if not for a helpful man who had just come home from goodness knows where, presumably to join in the general sleepiness of his neighbours. Anyway, he directed us to follow the canal, there’ll be a path on the left with a sign, can’t miss it.
Err. Okay. If you say so...
Here’s the view from the bridge over the canal...
And the aptly named Bridge Inn, which I wouldn’t have minded entering, actually
And look! Ducks!
And of course, no SLV (Sleepy Little Village) would be complete without its local church and graveyard!
Road less travelled? (Well, at least by small Asian tourists...)
Problem with the road less travelled is, well, it’s not well-travelled enough to warrant tarring or cobblestones... So we were soon doing a Duke-of-Edinburgh-esque trek through mud and puddles - aptly enough, whilst actually IN Edinburgh!
Beautiful, innit? You can see where Keats and the others are coming from...
Look! A rainbow!
FINALLY reached our destination after what seemed like AGES trekking through beautiful if rather UTTERLY DESERTED countryside. We were rather dubious at first, since it seemed most of the signs we encountered were of the bright yellow “KEEP OUT” / “DANGER” variety, accompanied by barbed wire and steel wire fences. It was virtually a scene taken out from Jurassic Park, or one of those movies where just after the hapless victim traveller chooses to go down one path of the fork in the road, the sign falls down to reveal some imminent danger in the path the traveller chooses...
...But obviously not, since I’m alive and well enough to post this!
The rock climbing place, when we finally figured out how to get in the front entrance and not the back where all the wire and “DANGER” signs were, was AMAZING. It was huge - far larger than 1Utama’s Camp5 climbing gym - and just... well, see for yourself!
Climbing fans, be jealous!
It’s apparently the world’s best rock climbing facility, so it was no wonder that we spent a few happy hours there. Unfortunately, since it was basically a disused rock quarry converted into a climbing centre by roofing it over, it was pretty darn cold, and I found myself not climbing as well as I usually do. Rather a disappointment, but stiiilll!
It was pitch black when we decided to stop - not hard to though, considering Edinburgh seems to get dark at 4pm. Walking back along that deserted PITCH BLACK path became practically impossible, so we cabbed it back (in a cab driven by a nice garrulous old man who became even more voluble once he found out we were Malaysians, since he’d gone there for his 40th wedding anniversary just a few weeks ago).
Upon touchdown in Edinburgh (pardon the mixed metaphor), we set off in time for a ghost tour! It wasn’t so much supernaturally scary as a fascinatingly entertaining medieval history session along with getting to see torture instruments that had actually been used in the past plus a visit to the underground city where quite a vast number of unfortunate souls happened to die horribly. But then again, most European medieval history is delightfully gruesome.
A corner of one of the underground vaults which is supposedly good for sightings of light orbs... see anything ghostly?
After the ghost tour, we had to make it back through the city to WY’s flat. Since we were rather surprisingly un-spooked, we took the opportunity to enjoy the city by night and savour the nippingly cold walk home.
Edinburgh skyline by night
I think blue lights are far nicer than the normal yellow ones, don’t you?
And that was my second day in Edinburgh!
Up next: Day 3 in Edinburgh!