ADM Mill. Leith Views. Bonnington District. Water of Leith Walkway.

                                                  ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.

This was the second half of a walk I did in October of 2025 on a different bus trip to Edinburgh from the Dean Village day but as it includes The Water of Leith Walkway and this massive grain mill, seen here with Arthur's Seat behind, it makes sense to fit it in here. The east coast gets half the rainfall and far more sunshine than the west coast so better growing conditions this side of Scotland.

This ADM mill in Leith built in the late 1960s replaced the old Chancelot Flour Mill at Bonnington which was built in the 1890s and lasted around 70 years before it was gutted by fire and an explosion then demolished. Flour stored in large quantities can be explosive. Which was a shame as it was an impressive huge building in the French chateau style with a large clock tower in the middle of the complex similar to Clydebank's Singer sewing machine factory clock tower ( also demolished) or Falkirk's Callendar House ( still there, but without a clock tower.) High clock towers adorned many large factories built in the Victorian era so workers without watches couldn't claim they never knew the start time and indeed across Europe watch and clock making developed at pace in the Industrial era mainly to encourage/ indoctrinate the tardy workforce to turn up on time, go to bed on time, and turn up the next day on time - semi sober. To live by the clock in other words.

Modern flour mills this size replaced the older style mills around picturesque Dean Village in the last post. It is also located in an empty area around the Port of Leith without housing surrounding it. Flour in these quantities being more prone to going off than dynamite apparently and the end of many an unsafe Victorian mill. 

Next to the ADM Milling fence lies a mural wall although this is much reduced since I was last here when my friend Anne danced Kiesza's Hideaway between two separate walls and dozens of good murals on show. Now it was just one wall, a few murals, but mostly graffiti. (Same as Glasgow's River Clyde waterfront city centre mural wall these days.)

Ozzy tribute. Didn't know he ate doves as well as bats....

Urban city art.

A short walk later I arrived at Leith. Leith is Edinburgh's traditionally working class port district but the area around the Water of Leith where it meets the sea has been gentrified into a kind of mini Venice or Amsterdam. When I first came here I thought 'Who the hell is Mary of Guise?' Not being a historian or from Edinburgh I was clueless until I looked it up. She was a noblewoman from one of the most connected families in France, Queen of Scotland for several years in the mid 1500s, and the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. The daughter who had a legitimate claim to the throne of England as well as Scotland, which is why she had such an unhappy life of imprisonment in various castles.

I've always liked Leith from the moment I laid eyes on it. The waterfront... the Port of Leith with its range of interesting ships, the buildings ( clearly influenced by its east coast trading partners in the Low Countries, Holland and Amsterdam...

As seen here in this photo.  Note again 7 floors and five floors high. Most Glasgow tenements are 3, 4, 6, etc usually even numbers of floors in the main even in high rise flats whereas Edinburgh prefers odd numbers including 9, 11 and 13, 15.

A wide range of architecture and styles. Malmaison Hotel here and open plaza. Note 5 floors.

Commercial Street View. Opps!  Nope.    5 floors if you include the attics :o)

Bernard Street View...

And of course the Water of Leith Walkway. Normally in past decades I've walked or cycled down the Water of Leith from the outskirts to the sea but this time I fancied doing it in reverse.

Mural reflecting the current world situation. War instead of peace.

When I was looking in this direction I noticed a swan family approaching.

I have seen up to ten cygnets in a family but 2 or 3 is more common by the time they reach adulthood so this group of six is doing well. Pike, mink, trapped in rubbish, discarded fishing gear, swallowing plastic...it all mounts up.

A peaceful wooded stretch of the Water of Leith. And it was near here I discovered more murals.

Wildlife in pastels this time.

An otter.

More swans.

Antony Gormley sculpture in the Water of Leith. I think there's six statues in total here but I only noticed two. This one on past occasions, because the water here is shallow, has been dressed in various outfits from a fast food helper to a sailor so this is the first time I've spotted it naked of clothes.

The last figure sits on an old disused pier in the Western Harbour and it is a far harder one to get out to dress so it is usually left unadorned but not alone, surrounded by seabirds, including various cormorants, seen here.

I liked these shell and pebble decorations on walkway walls.

And at Bonnington District I also passed this huge warehouse which I think was a sugar refinery to begin with then maybe, perhaps, a bond storing imported alcohol and tobacco. Not too sure about that as Bonnington used to be an industrial district which has other large old buildings close by and one of them might have been the bond. The Chancelot Flour mill mentioned earlier was in this same district. ( you can see photos of that on Google or other search engines. Chancelot Flour Mill. 'The most handsome mill in the world.' 

Now, like many other listed buildings in Edinburgh, unlike Glasgow, it has been converted into upmarket apartments, along with many others in this district. I was intrigued here to notice the bottom two floors left open and unconverted. Air ventilation or an underground car park, storage etc? ..... A mystery.

I did have an online look at the apartments inside here a few months ago, once converted, just out of interest, and they were very stylish, well out of my price range... or taste. Between £1000 to 1,500 a month rent. I also thought, maybe unfounded, that the real reason Edinburgh converts so many old buildings into apartments is that folk want to live in this city but, due to inconvenient rocky outcrops, volcanoes etc, getting in the way there's not that much spare empty land left inside Edinburgh's city limits to build new stuff on. New affordable starter home housing on previously un-built ground is appearing... but outside the city boundary... so not part of Edinburgh.

In the last post I featured a song called Riverside. Now I have found members of the Danish National Girls Choir singing it. I've never put a choir on here before so this must be on a different level of excellence. Unusual setting but it works. Beautiful harmonics that elevate this classic song even further. Another thing I never thought about until I looked it up recently is that in the Scandinavian countries , i.e. Norway, Sweden and Denmark, most people can understand each other to a certain extent as all three have the same root language, especially written down on paper. Still learning facts all the time.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Z0WUZgCwU&list=RDw_Z0WUZgCwU&start_radio=1