Canada Day 2020

It feels like a subdued Canada Day; the pandemic cancelling all big celebrations and the protests about our serious inequalities dampering our pride in this country of ours.

Rising

There are several items none of us saw coming this year, namely of course, the pandemic. The fall out of that though is where it dips into the

Encore Act

They are all ears, hanging on my every word. Like little sponges soaking up decades of

Twilight Settles

Twilight settled noisily around the shoulders of the small

Glass Breaks & Other Lessons

The words, thoughtfully crafted decades ago, sit forgotten on shelf. It might have been prudent to have

Arundel – Medieval Boots

Sometimes things work out perfectly and sometimes they don’t. We had both spectrums of that today but I’m going to

Walking to The Shoe

It was all laid out perfectly and all details synced except, in the end, for The Shoe.

Lost in stride

It’s well known that my sense of direction is a

bit suspect at times. Today, apparently, it didn’t even exist. I’ve been turned around all day and thankful for my man and his great directional prowess. Fortunately we were walking around Edinburgh and not driving around Scotland!We had a lovely breakfast out with family at Queensferry. This is home to 3 bridges that fascinates engineers for sure. I remember clearly on our first trip to Scotland a couple of decades ago we had to find somewhere to pull over so we could get a picture of it. It’s chock full of history and quite an engineering feat. They worked 24/7 for 7 years and 59 lives were lost during the creation of it.

Then we hopped aboard a Scot Train bound for Edinburgh. No hastles of parking and it was a nice change for Ron from driving. Public transit is always interesting people watching.

People were the one commodity we never ran out of today. Sunday on the Golden Mile probably had more people than we’ve seen in the rest of Scotland!! Seriously.

We meandered around and were interested in a variety of things; history, architecture and Harry Potter/J. K. Rowling spots. We saw tons of all those items. Our afternoon beer was at the Tollbooth Tavern, historically home to the worst prison in Scottish history. Such a cool building.

We saw an unusual number of unicorns – bet you didn’t see that coming! Although now the picture of the 3rd and funniest one is gone.

A mystery but I must move on to catch up. Unicorns are a royal symbol so while they seem like a new hot ticket kid item they’ve always had a special place in the symbols of royal families.

We visited the entrance to two royal castles set in the Golden Mile; Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Castle. The later was closed to the public and the former had an excessive number of tourists so neither of them got more than a few photos.

We didn’t manage the Harry Potter walking tour but did it more the Sherlock Holmes way; a bit of sleuthing here and there. Tom Riddle’s grave was easy as the grass is indeed trampled. Victoria Street was a dead ringer for Diagon Alley. A few others were more vague and others not worth tracking down. The cafe where she wrote the first one and the hotel room where she finished the seventh weren’t on our agenda.

It’s important to recognize the line between fact and fiction and I didn’t want our entire time to be eaten up by that.

So we wandered over and around; checking out old buildings and new ones. They have a significant amount of construction within the downtown core. There are all these little tiny lanes off the Golden Mile and they lead into more buildings.

It’s much easier to see from up top. Using his engineering brain Ron was able to figure out that one entire block in behind.

Totally hidden behind a slightly new looking bigger entrance through two buildings. It’s such a hilly city and has so many crossing weirdly angled streets I was quite happy by this point to let him navigate.

We managed the correct platform (and no the ticket lady didn’t look amused when I said I was sure we didn’t want 9 3/4) and the train rattled us back to where we started. I tried to walk the wrong way to get out, giving those boots one last work out!

Thankfully once back on the road my navigatioal skills did return to get us back to my young English cousin’s house.

We then spent a couple more hours discussing ancestors and English history. Hence the no blog post as I was only a quarter done on the train using the free wifi. It’s always a scramble to catch back up but I’m hopeful.

Bernie

Quick Step by the #’s

There were 3 Distilleries

Balanced by 2 Castles

Plus 1 Cooperage

There was a graveyard to walk

There were endless windy country roads

There was lunch in the village square

There was 1 stone circle

There was 1 Co-op store

There was 1 Railway Station

But oh what a station it was

There was a mountain road

There was a ski hill

There was the sunset

But oh what a sunset it was

Bernie

It’s late // there is more to the story but that’s it for tonight. Have to go do our Scotch notes.

B

Note to self

• Chat with elderly lady in cemetery (( done due to insomnia))
• Background on train station
• The ski hill
• Co-op store reference
• Balmoral Castle
• Pheasants
• GDP of Scotland
• Crop rotation and heather flowering

Quiet Steps