Outdoor Adventure

So this past Saturday, 27th September, 2008, I got up early (well, I'm still waking up really early anyway), and went for a hike up Arthur's Seat, the tallest point in the city of Edinburgh. And I took a bunch of pictures. This is a picture of the plateau. I thought this was Arthur's Seat, as the maps I've seen aren't clear, and this is all I can see from anywhere within the city. Little did I know.

This is the beginning of my path up to the top. I'm not sure how old it actually is, but it was crumbling pretty badly, so either it's pretty old, or just poorly maintained.

This is a picture of what is actually Arthur's Seat, from about a quarter of the way up. I had a lot farther to go than I had thought.

These are some ruins visible from the main path. How cool is that?

Here I am at the ruins, themselves. They are from St. Anthony's Chapel, which has been dated to the early 15th century; in 1426, the Pope had granted money for its repair, so it had to have been built some time before that.

Along the way, the path from earlier gave way to a simple dirt path overgrown with grasses, but about three quarters of the way up, it turned back into this cobbled path.

At last, I made it to the top! These are some of the rocks there.

This is part of what I could see from the top; the bigg white building in the right hand part of the shot is the stadium for Hibernian, one of Edinburgh's local football clubs.

Another shot from the top. This is part of the golf course that isn't too far from my flat, and I think the buildings right there are the Pollock Residence Halls, undergraduate housing for the University of Edinburgh. I think, I'm not sure.

The rocks in the foreground of this shot are where I was standing, at Arthur's Seat, and the grassy flat in the upper part of the picture is the plateau that I thought was Arthur's Seat...the actual peak is much higher than that.

This is a picture of me at the top, done with a timer on my camera. I have not started slicking my hair back, like it appears in this picture, it was just so damn windy. When I went to the International Student Meetings they had during Fresher's (i.e., Orientation) Week, they told me that there's an old saying here: If the wind stops in Edinburgh, everybody will fall down. From the top of Arthur's Seat, I can see where that comes from, I have only felt constant, crazy wind like that a couple times in my life.

Having conquered Arthur's Seat, I went back down, and found this little loch; it's in a park of some kind, not far from the Palace of Holyrood House, the official residence of the Queen in Scotland. I went closer, because I've been jonesing for some contact with bodies of water, and I found....

...swans! There was a nice little flock of them here. All swans in the UK are the property of Her Majesty The Queen, and I know that swans tend to get pissed off if you get too close, so I tried to keep a respectful distance. But there was some middle school track team that came running through them, and they barely noticed, and a lady started feeding them bread, and they seemed quite calm. The alpha male (I think it was the male, anyway), however, didn't seem to like me.

This fella stalked me for a while. This was taken after I had twice had to back up as he advanced on me, though he didn't seem to mind the lady in the boots in this shot taking pictures of the swans. Maybe I smelled aggressive, I don't know. But this bird didn't seem to want me around.

After I left the park, I walked up the Royal Mile, the street which runs between the Palace of Holyrood House and Edinburgh Castle. I didn't get pictures of the Palace, because I didn't want to pay to get inside the gates, and I couldn't get a good shot through the gates. But I did come across the House of Scottish Parliament.

It's a pretty cool building, this picture doesn't really do it justice. I'll try to get pictures of this, the Palace and the castle, and put them up in a post soon.

-Stephen