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StevoTrip2006 Friday, September 22, 2006
London to Edinburgh to Fort William
Well, I'm well into my trip now. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to keep up my contact (particularly the more technologically advanced aspects of it, like posting photos) as internet access has been a little flakier than I hoped. However, today I have struck the double jackpot: an excellent internet cafe in a relatively dull town (Fort William). So before I head up into the Highlands I can do the full data dump. The first couple of days were pretty much solid travel. Firstly there was my wrong way around the world (Melbourne, to New Zealand, To L.A., to London), which amazingly wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I arrived in London in the late morning, and didn't really do anything that first day due to jet lag. However, it was great to catch up with Tim and Rebecca. I only spent one night at their place and was too sleepy to interact much, but I look forward to spending a week with them when I finish my loop through Scotland.
The second day I headed up to Edinburgh on the train (which was great: I've heard all sorts of negative things about British Rail, but it all ran on time. Edinburgh was everything I'd been led to expect: very mediaeval in character, with lots of little laneways disappearing off from the main roads. I was staying in the Old Town, which is the original old bit of it (there's also a later planned New Town from the 18th century, which I should be able to poke around a bit when I come back through on the way back). The main spine is the Royal Mile, which runs up the ridge of the hill to the Castle. My guidebook says the following about the old bit of town:
...An etymology that makes the name of this swanky house in Parkville all the more puzzling. However, there's no sign of such things now. Apparently parts of Royal Mile were pretty slummy even quite recently, but these days it's fully gentrified and very much the centre of the tourist industry. It's remarkably intact, with really only the bottom quarter or so showing any significant number of new buildings. It's therefore amazingly unified in terms of character, but being all so old, also kind of charmingly slapdash in the way it's laid out. So, for example, you get two streets crossing at right angles, but with one about three storeys above the other: and the same old building facing both sides of the corner, with two separate street frontages at the two different levels. At the top of the street is Edinburgh Castle. I spent the best part of a day wandering around the castle (inside and out) and it was well worthwhile. It has cliffs on three of its four sides, and this natural geographic protection gave it an obvious strategic advantage, although this was undermined somewhat by the castle's notoriously clumsy contingent of archers, who in the heat of battle would often literally shoot themselves in the foot (below).
I was impressed by the fact that despite the fact that it has been steadily added to over hundreds of years (the last bits were added in 1927), they haven't screwed it up. If they did an addition to it now, some architect would probably propose a giant glass pyramid in the central courtyard or something. Speaking of such things, at the bottom of the Royal Mile is the new Scottish Parliament building, which was recently completed after years of controversy. It's a nice enough building, although parts of it look uncomfortably like an apartment building to me:
Yesterday I got the car and drove to Fort William, with the main stop being Stirling Castle. Similar to Edinburgh's in a lot of ways, but more fun to explore, with more nooks and crannies, and a couple of big open garden spaces hidden in amongst the walls. I spent long enough at Stirling that I ended up being very late up to Fort William, but it was well worth it. Anyway, my energy is flagging so I'll sign off now. However, if you'd like to have a look through some more of my photos, you should be able to click on the thingamy at the top right and go through to flickr where you can browse some of them. (The uploaded photos may get ahead of these updates).
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Because a holiday doesn't actually happen if you don't spend it in internet cafes describing it to other people. www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Paris, 2006. Make your own badge here.
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