Arthur’s Seat

Keeping in mind that Friday was our last day in Edinburgh for several weeks and the weather was nice, we decided if there was one other place we didn’t want to miss it was walking in Holyrood Park up to Arthur’s Seat. It is an amazing natural area where you do find trails but is largely just open land. You can still hear some aspects of the city but as you walk deeper in, and up, all that fades away.

I later learned this geologic area is an extinct volcano that last erupted an estimated 350 million years ago when continental drift placed Scotland closer to the equator. In fact, I found it interesting that James Hutton, a Scot and the ‘Father of Modern Geology’ developed some of his theories hiking around what is Holyrood Park. The rock outcrops and overall form is compelling.

And the name. One immediately thinks of King Arthur. It isn’t clear where the name came from. In looking for an answer to that, I found a super site that contained a list of seven odd facts associated with this iconic mountain. If you are so inclined, you can find it here.

The Approach

As in most cities we’ve been in, we opt to walk to almost all places we can. It is good exercise and helps us experience a different part of the city up close. We have found that using our Google Maps app to navigate around works great, though it sometimes is a bit slow on letting us know where we are. The result, especially in cities that aren’t on a strict grid, is we miss a turn or simply get turned around (easier than you would think) when a road curves and have to reorient. It also sometimes sends us places that aren’t roads.

That was the case walking to Arthur’s Seat. To reorient, we walked along a road in the shadow of a quite imposing structure clearly abandoned. It is the Old Royal High School (we don’t have a picture), built between 1826 and 1829. The school didn’t relocate until 1968 which leads one to believe it was occupied as such for a very long time. Various alternative uses have been proposed but clearly, to date, nothing definitive yet and it sits in a sad state. Across from that building is the view above. The curved flattish form in the front is the Salisbury Crags. Arthur’s Seat is actually the peak behind that in the middle of the photo.

Burial Ground

From in front of the Old Royal High School, we needed to head south toward Arthur’s Seat. We found a route that went through the New Carlton Burial Ground. As Trev pointed out to me, cemeteries are associated with and owned by a church. A burial ground doesn’t have that association. I find these places interesting because the markers tell a story. In one case, sadly, it marked the grave of a couple and four of their children which all died quite young and within a few years of each other in the 1800’s. The burial ground itself was established between 1817 and 1820.

A slightly gruesome side note is there is a watch tower there that was built to guard against graverobbers. This was actually a thing in Edinburgh back in the early 1800’s as I learned from folks in my weekend weaving class. One began telling me about Burke and Hare. Hare ran a boarding house and on the side they had a side business of murdering lodgers and selling their bodies to a local doctor for anatomical lectures.

After cutting through the burial ground, we ended up very close to the new Scottish Parliament building. (Ok, ‘cutting through a burial ground’ sounds awful. To be clear, it is open to the public, we walked respectfully, and we did stop to read stones which in my thinking is a way to honor those that lived and died here.) As far as the parliament building, it is a wild, new building that has been somewhat controversial in how modern/unusual it is. We plan on touring it before we leave Edinburgh.

On the Trail

As we started on the trail, more and more people did the same. It became quite a pilgrimage up a main, paved route, clearly designed to help people get up to a trail to the top. As we do, Trev and I chose a different, less traveled route. Our park map indicated there were enough criss-crossing trails that we could find a way up from the other side of the park. We veered to the right and ended up walking through a valley. That sounds crazy to say because in a large city park in a city like Edinburgh, you wouldn’t think inside of it there could be enough uplift to create a valley between. There is.

The views were stunning. We could see easily to the Firth of Forth – the large estuary (or Firth) into which many rivers including the Forth. Mostly covered in grasses and wildflowers, it was an amazing, peaceful place. We crossed a few breaks in the trail lined by stones – clearly they maintain this place in as low key a way as possible to help water movement. To the left there was clearly a wet area with cattails. It is a whole system here.

We encountered a group of 70-something women, we think German, at a trail juncture trying to decide as we were the proper route up. You can actually see them still thinking on it at the trail juncture in the “Looking Down” photo above. We opted for one that became a climb on switchback after switchback. Again, though, all built in stone steps which made it a lot easier and I imagine less slippery than if it was just wet or dry soil. Near the top, my vertigo kicked in a little as the steps disappeared and we were navigating an eroded trail on the top.

Arriving just to the east of the actual peak which is the actual “Arthur’s Seat” we could see in all directions. You could see those throngs of people we had parted from at the beginning had made it up there and it looked really, really crowded up there. We looked at each other and decided neither of us needed to be a part of that mess. As you can see from the featured photo with my handsome husband and the others, we weren’t cheated out of any views. Just gorgeous – and actually a bit windy and chilly as the sun went behind a cloud.

Descent

We descended to the north but then east side and found a more gradual slope to follow. In snow, this could easily be a bunny to green slope. Across to another rise that is a part of this “mountain” complex, we saw what at first appeared to be homeless tents. Sad that that was our first thought. That harkens back to seeing those tent cities in places like Austin, TX and Portland, OR back in the States. As we came closer, Trev recognized that it is actually an archaeology dig site. You could see a square cut in the hill and they had a flat tarp over their heads. We read later there is evidence of humans here all the way back to the Neolithic period around 5,000 BC. There must be amazing things to find here.

St. Anthony’s Chapel

That site was above a pond that the maps note is Dunsapie Loch full of swans. We joined up with a paved path that went by the Loch and then the long way around Arthur’s Seat. Happily, we ended up getting a gorgeous view on approach of St. Anthony’s Chapel. It sits above another water body – St. Margaret’s Loch. We had caught a glimpse of the structure when we started walking up that less-traveled trail and it was wonderful to see it closer. And another side note. If you do get curious about those odd seven facts, based on #7 we have Prince Albert to thank for these two Lochs.

It is the only structure in the park, albeit in ruin. When I see something like this, I always want to know when it was built and what it was. Documentation exists that the Pope gave a grant to pay for repairs in 1426, which indicates it had been standing a while at this time. Apparently, there isn’t much else known about when exactly it was built, which Abby it was associated with, or its purpose. It did have a 40-foot tower at one time and could have been a beacon for sailors or a place for pilgrims out of the main city. It seems to have been abandoned sometime between 1560 and 1581. And again, I have this moment of feeling quite small in the story of human history. There it sits, something we can walk around that people built and used 600 years ago. The history on this trip continues to be awesome.

So our hike with the goal of reaching Arthur’s Seat offered us so much more. It was a great day.