ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.
Another walk from my autumn (October) solo bus trips to Edinburgh. On this one I'd taken the bus from Princes Street to Blackford Hill, Hermitage of Braid, Braid Hills, and Braidburn Valley Park. This pleasant high level route took under 3 hours or so to walk so by early afternoon I'd done it. As it was around 3 hours to get to Edinburgh from Glasgow and 3 hours back. ( including my bus journey from the outskirts of Glasgow into Buchanan Bus Station, city to city heavy traffic, waiting times, then local Edinburgh bus up to the hill start point.) I wanted to make the most of each trip. The Blackford Hill walk I've already posted a couple of months ago so this is the second half of that day.
Coming out at Comiston Road, A702, near the Braid Hills Hotel I jumped on a local bus to take me down to Bruntsfield, seen above. A lot of Edinburgh's outer ring of suburbs looks like this one, above, what I would consider middle class districts. Edinburgh does have rough working class estates but not as many as Glasgow so my overall impression of the city of Edinburgh is middle class.
And a lot of well built prestigious buildings in every district. This is Bruntsfield Links, a grassy large rectangle which runs into The Meadows with a pitch and putt course and various paths running across it. After a certain age you do wonder if you will make it back to certain places so I was determined to visit the meadows again. The last time was over five years ago, pre covid lockdowns, when in early spring I cycled past vast carpets of multi coloured crocus, twice the size of Glasgow's blooms. Not expecting to see that it was a vivid experience I'll always remember. On this journey I noticed something I'd missed back then. Murals in the red close entry to the right of the black establishment.
Don't know if these buildings were owned by the co-op but the paintings were certainly different and unusual.
A blue angel.
This large grassy rectangle runs into the meadows, the Edinburgh equivalent of Glasgow Green only without a large river beside it. Prestigious buildings run along the edges, as seen here.
Muriel Spark, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie grew up in Bruntsfield, went to school there and mentions the meadows in her famous book, as depicted above. I don't think she liked Edinburgh very much though, similar to her lead character, as she soon travelled the world as an adult, ending up in Italy, which suited her better.
I then wandered up to George Square, many places in Edinburgh named after King George, an area I hadn't visited before. And all around me wandered students. I'm used to passing through all three Glasgow University areas. The University of Glasgow, Caledonian University and the University of Strathclyde and usually I might see 100 or so students in these areas while walking.
Yet here it was as if a major football team's supporters were leaving a match, many thousands strong. And I also noticed nearly every building I spotted belonged to the University of Edinburgh. Not just this square, but everywhere, street after street.
I'd naively assumed, Glasgow traditionally being twice the size of Edinburgh's population at one million ( 1930s- 1960s period) compared to just under half a million in Edinburgh that Glasgow would have bigger universities ... but not so. Even someone as unsophisticated/ dense, as me, not having looked up or wondered about comparative university sizes before... started to get the message that this assumption was completely wrong....It was like Michael Palin in ripping yarns in his tiny holiday cottage surrounded and dwarfed by a full u boat crew pretending to be his 30 cottage servants for the week.
Another University of Edinburgh building in yet another street. So I looked it up. Turns out the University of Edinburgh is the UK's 4th largest after London, The Open University, and Manchester, at 49,000 students. Glasgow University is 9th. Even the three Glasgow universities put together fail to match the University of Edinburgh. And it also has Scotland's most exclusive private/public schools like Fettes College and George Heriot's which I also wandered past ( and tried (unsuccessfully) to explore on previous occasions. Just out of curiosity.
I also stumbled across Burke and Hare's lap dancing pub. Through I'm fairly sure the only lap dancing the famous murderers did was when teeth fell out of any recently deceased corpse, helped along the way by smothering hands.
It was a convoluted route I took which also included West Port, seen above,
Lady's Wynd, Seen here, A lane leading down to Edinburgh Castle...
Where it looked at its highest. " We shall attack it from here lads! Looks the easiest side to storm up and capture it...."
A cornucopia. A common motif in both Glasgow and Edinburgh on buildings constructed during the golden years of the British Empire. Good for the UK elite anyway. Soot and grime for the working class, exploitation, slavery and death abroad.
The White Hart Inn. Grassmarket.
West Bow. One of my favourite streets and a tourist haunt. Unless you arrive very early it's impossible to take a photo here without a crowd in it although I did try to get everyone facing away from the camera. Around ten levels high, roughly where the white building is in this photo, a narrow staircase rises steeply up into the royal mile. I remembered it from years ago. Also an interesting and truly bizarre story about this place and maybe yet another inspiration for 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Weir Worth a look. Unique.
Edinburgh in general is a lot busier than my first visits to the city thanks to the internet but you can see why. Paint anything in vivid primary colours and it will be an instant hit. Had to miss out the lower section of shops here as the street was crammed with tourists.
West Bow Shops.
I then took the narrow staircase steeply upwards to arrive out on the Royal Mile, around here. Then across this road... then steeply back down again to Princes Street Gardens via another long narrow descending lane. The best bits of old Edinburgh for a hill walker.
Then up and down to the bus station via George Street and Edinburgh's New Town elegance. As old Edinburgh is built over volcanic ridges and sills you do climb a great deal traveling across it south to north, as I was here. West to east is much easier... but tame. With more crowds.
One of many fine period buildings in George Street.
A pediment detail. The triangular space on top of a period building, often filled with decorative figures from Greek, Roman or occasionally Egyptian history. Another great day out.
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