A Trip to Edinburgh in August 2013

Day 0

Suesan, her son Saul and I filled the car up with fuel, bought plenty of drinks and snacks for the journey and so that we could have an early start, and because her house is at the end of a very quiet street, we packed up the car late the night before and had an early night.

Day 1

Using my android mobile phone as a sat-nav we drove about 130 miles north to Whitely Bay, which is just East of central Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The traffic was heavy and static for the first hour or so, but once we cleared that we flew the rest of the way.

We had planned to visit St Mary’s lighthouse and museum, but what we had failed to notice was that it was only open to the public for a few hours as the road out to the lighthouse was only accessible at low tide.

Being unable to visit the lighthouse we instead did some beach combing and then visited the Blue Reef Aquatic Centre where we took plenty of pictures and stayed until we had seen the feeding of the Seals.

After the aquatic centre we drove the last few miles to our overnight lodgings in Newcastle, as I felt that Suesan would be more refreshed and able to enjoy herself if we broke up the almost 300 mile journey from Lincoln to Edinburgh at a sensible midway point.

The hotel I had chosen for us was a Holiday Inn on the main road north, and was fairly comfortable though in the room price it did not include a breakfast or use of the hotels Wi-Fi.

The hotels masseuses were also fully booked up and the spa itself closed at 8pm, and so we just retired to our room for the night and ate the rest of our picnic that we had brought with us.

Day 2

After a rather bland and tasteless breakfast we set off early and thankfully we made good time and progress up through Northern England and cross over the border in to Scotland without event or fanfare.

Because the road app that I had installed was still new to both Suesan and myself, we got a bit lost right at the last and by a total fluke ended up stopping at a café to ask for directions literally 30 seconds away from our guesthouse, which was a coincidence as we had planned to pit stop in the city centre and pick up our bus passes for the week.

After sampling some wonderful tea, scones and Scottish customer service, we checked into our guest house, parked up, unpacked the car and chose who was having which bed.

Suesan’s son Saul, having spotted a trampoline out back, was a bit disappointed to hear that it was off limits until it was fully repaired and cleaned, but apart from that the place was just as we imagined it from the website images.

We didn’t have long before the first itinerated event of Edinburgh began, so with a bus stop literally across the road from our guesthouse, we hopped on a bus that took us to the city centre and then again almost by accident on the way we passed the main bus terminal where we paused in order to collect our photo ID bus passes.

With there being no time saved by taking a bus the rest of the way to our venue, we carried on and soon found ourselves at the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival, where we collected our prepaid entrance tickets and then after grabbing a drink queued up for ‘I Need A Doctor : an unauthorised Whosical’.

The show was a mixed sex double act of locals who for an hour entertained us with some very home-made cardboard cut-out costumes, home made lyrics and a few bad puns and jokes based on the modern BBC show Doctor Who.

It was very enthusiastically and energetically performed, but not exactly world class, but I was glad that I had booked it for us, and Suesan and Saul loved it and played along which made the experience all the more enjoyable.

After this we had a few hours to kill before the Royal Military Tattoo performance started we chose to take a walk through the National Museum until it closed.

With only a couple of hours before it closed we knew that we were not going to be able to see everything, but the layout was very confusing and try as we might we could not find stairs or elevators that would take us to have the floors that were mean to house the educational sections.

We quickly decided that the best way to tackle the museum was to go to the very top and work our way down, which we proceeded to do after taking some aerial shots of the city rooftops and spotting a rather bizarre giant inflated upturned purple cow, udders and all!

We did manage to buy a few souveniers and hung around the various interactive displays until the guards almost had to drag us out of there kicking and screaming.

Being already so close to Edinburgh Castle we still had some time left to kill which we used to go grab a bite to eat, and in doing so we stumbled upon a very friendly group of locals who for some reason didn’t object to us interrupting their meal with questions and before I could blink we were a table of seven instead of two tables of four and three.

I think that had we and our new friends not both had prior engagements we probably would have moved on to a bar and stayed with each other for the remainder of the night, but they had a Fringe Festival show at 7pm and the Tattoo performance started at 7:30pm, thus it was with an effort that we said goodbye to our new friends and left.

The entire entrance to the castle was packed with the audience of the Tattoo, which forced us to have to snake around several buildings in order to join the back of the queue. Very fortunately our tickets were in the third row from the front, right at ground level, and so we were very close to the performers and able to see much of the detail on the various costumes on display.

I have never been a huge fan of the traditional bagpipe players, but when you are there in the Medieval Castle steeped in all its culture and history, and then you are faced with an entire troupe of pitch perfect pipers, all preconceptions fly away and I was en-wrapped from beginning to end.

There were so many performance segments that it was hard to pick a favourite, but I would have to say that the motorcyclists were amazing, the New Zealanders with their backward criss-cross marching was breath taking and the Spanish, Korean and Mongolian dancers all added a very international flavour to the even.

After the Tattoo it was past 10pm, so with most of the shops now closed all we could do was walk back to a bus stop and catch a night bus that once again stopped right outside our guest house.

Day 3

After a full night’s sleep and a very full continental breakfast that was only missing a haggis for including everything you could imagine, we hopped on a bus and planned on a long and steady trek up the extinct volcano Arthurs Seat, that we had been reliably informed would take us most of the day.

The bus threated itself around and through Edinburgh city centre and right before we got off we could see that we were in a slightly more rundown part of the city. Not that it mattered all that much, as within moments we were clear of roads and traffic and facing the elements.

For some reason that Suesan had not told me before hand, she and Saul had decided to race each other up to the top and instead of taking the slow and leisurely walk to the rear of the mountain and pass the idyllic lake they started scrambling up the rocky slope of the steepest face.

Not to be outdone, even though I was carrying the food and drinks, I had to follow them but it was tiring work and we did have to stop a couple of times to catch our breaths and pause for refreshments.

Just below the peak there is a small plateau and it was here that Suesan’s knees started to give out, and not wanting to risk serious damage, and knowing that we still had a full week of going up and down some fairly steep roads and streets, I happily passed on the final push to the very top and settled back to let me feet rest for a few minutes and to take some scenic photographs.

As we had pushed ourselves hard, we had cut short a 2 hour trek down to a little over half an hour, and so as we were already up and had finished out packed lunch as well, we felt that we might as well make best use of our time by returning back to the city centre and trying to fit in some sightseeing and gift shopping before our next itinerated event that was still at least six hours away.

So, making our way via a different and more stepped route back down, we made our way to the Palace at Hollyrood House and began taking in the historic Royal Mile and all its shops, museums and the Parliament building which was rather puzzlingly not open to the general public!

Midway up the mile we literally stumbled upon another Museum, and so thinking that it could not be that big inside we went in and investigated. It was very much like the Tardis, in that it was much much bigger on the inside that the outside, and almost two hours later we emerged and had to make our way to the other main Fringe Festival location.

Following the map and common sense we thought that it were going to the purple upturned cow that we had spotted the day before, but it turned out that the entrance was just behind it and inside a main venue.

We were booked into see the Cambridge Footlights show Canada, the footlights being the traditional breaking ground for so many British comedians that it would be easier to name a British comedian that DIDN’T start off there instead of reeling off all those that did.

Sadly the queue for this place was huge and rather foolishly believing that the venues hearing aid loop system would be working we sat at the back to get the best view and instantly found that the system wasn’t working and thus poor Suesan could not hear a single word.

With Suesan getting bored before the intermission, she decided to go out into the main bar and just have a few drinks, while Saul and I remained is for the second part of the show. There were quite a few clever jokes thrown in the script, along with several bits that were silly or daft, and I can see that with a bit of work and some encouragement it was entirely possible that we were witnessing future comedic stars in the making.

On our way out Suesan stuck in a little note in the theatres suggestion box to say “please get your t-loop system fixed” but as it was the last day of the festival it was unlikely that they would bother getting round to it this year.

With still a few hours of daylight left, we did some more kilt and souvenir shopping, stopped off at another restaurant and then caught a late night bus back to our hotel.

Just as the bus was pulling away Suesan suddenly realised that she had left her purse on the bus, and so what followed next was an hour of us stopping every bus that came past the guesthouse trying to find out if they could get in touch with the driver of the bus and not have it handed in to the lost property office which would not be open to the public until the following Tuesday for collection.

Mercifully the route of the original bus driver took his back past the guesthouse in the opposite direction, and he recognised Suesan instantly and so with huge sighs of relief we belatedly got back to our room and fell almost instantly asleep.

Day 4

One of the reasons why we had chosen Edinburgh to visit was because it according to the internet it had some great sites for fossil hunting, and with Suesan and Saul both being budding palaeontologists, it seemed to all fit in.

Thus it was that this morning, after a smallish but late breakfast, that we piled into the car, fed the co-ordinations into my sat-nav and headed on over to the Queensferry Bridge in order to do some fossil hunting on the beach at its base.

When we reached the beach we found that it was at mid-tide and so asking some locals whether it was coming in or out, we were bemused to be told that the tide was coming in only to find the exact opposite was true.

For a couple of hours we sat on the beach hitting rocks with our small hammers, but despite our best efforts we failed to find any actual fossil remains,  though there were shells and interesting rocks aplenty.

Next up on the agenda was a trip to the Bo’Ness steam railway station a few miles further East of Edinburgh, but here my trusty sat-nav let me down by directing us to a small cul-de-sac that was close to the train station but not actually close enough.

At the station we found that as we had not booked in advance, we were unable to purchase first class tickets or the on-train tea and scones, so we improvised and bought everything in the station café just around the corner and took it on board with us anyway.

Saul, being the inquisitive soul that he is, asked if he was allowed to climb on the actual engine carriage and to my surprise the driver said yes, even letting him shovel in a few small loads of coal in to the engines furnace for good measure.

So, while Saul was happy nosing around the engine, Suesan and I sat in the standard carriages and consumed vast quantities of tea and scones, with cream, real butter and thick strawberry jelly topping.

Although the train did stop at a couple of actual stations, because we had arrived an hour later than planned, we really didn’t have enough time to hop on and catch the next train and so we stayed on the steam train to the end of its ten or so mile route, turn around and then caught it back again.

Whilst the train was stopping off Suesan spotted some wild strawberry plants growing thick and abundant by the trackside, and being the nature lover that she was, she liberated herself a couple of healthy looking root strands that would probably survive the journey back down south.

On board the train Saul met and befriended another kid who lived in Leeds, and so once we were all back at Bo’Ness station the two lads ran on ahead together to investigated the steam train museum while Suesan and I followed behind at a much more leisurely pace.

Not for the first time, we were the last out of an Edinburgh Museum and politely ushered out by the museum curators, after which we climbed back into our car and made our way back to our guesthouse for a planned and much needed early night.

At this point, we passed via a local supermarket to refill our packed lunch supplies and to buy a couple of bottles of wine which we planned to share the following night.

Day 5

Today was always going to be a bit of a weird day, as ahead of time we had agreed that at some stage during the holiday I was allowed a day to myself to go exploring and wandering at my own time and pace, and Suesan and Saul had said that they were happy to let me as they intended on doing a full day of fossil hunting at a couple of other remote locations far away from the city centre.

It was also Suesan’s birthday, and for her birthday treat she had turned down a day trip to a luxury spa in preference for a more simple family activity of us all going to the local swimming pool, with the promise that we would give her some peace and quiet in the adjacent with sauna and steam room after to relax in.

So it was that after breakfast, Suesan and Saul packed up the car and headed off to do more rock hitting with tiny hammers, while I did some souvenir hunting, purchased Suesan a birthday present and card, took some more photos and then freed up some evening time by going to a day showing of a movie in a cinema that I had previously pencilled in as another solo treat for myself on another night.

With our mobiles fully charged, we kept in touch throughout the day, and so when they were ready to come back to the guesthouse with the car heavily laden down with some great fossil finds, I caught a bus back to the guesthouse myself merely a few minutes before they got back.

As Suesan does not have much of an appetite at the best of times, she did not feel like eating anything before swimming, so instead we just washed the dirt and sand off the fossils that they had brought back, and of course Suesan opened her birthday card.

A few hours later we were making our way by bus to the local swimming centre, but even though it got us to within a hundred yards of so, as there was no road signs or advertising for the venue it was Suesan who spotted the tiny wall plaque that read ‘baths’ and encouraged us to enter within.

Once inside the place we could see that the city council had chosen to keep its rustic charm by refusing to renovate it but had done a marvellous job on the building and pools general upkeep.

Although I enjoy a splashing about in the water as much as the next guy, I would not say that I am a good swimmer by any means, and so after completing a few obligatory lengths I happily bobbed up and down in the shallow end for a bit until Suesan was ready for her steam room quiet time and I got out and got changed.

Once the other two got out, we made our way back to the bus stop and caught a bus back to our guest house and had an early-ish night, still being fairly tired from the exertion of our recently swim.

Day 6

Today it was back to normal holiday mode, as we all had our breakfast and then caught a bus to the Dynamic Earth exhibition centre that we were sure Saul would enjoy as much as would. We were right, but not in the way we had planned, as after its website it was very much an anti-climax and so none of us enjoyed it all that much to be honest.

A lot of the exhibition information was what Suesan would call “Lies We Tell Kids” in that it over simplified all of the scientific data down to a level that wouldn’t even challenge a five year old, and so though we were mildly amused in places we did not really learn anything.

The exhibitions grand finale was a 4D iMax cinema experience which was a bit of a total let down as the domed screen was virtually impossible to look at without sticking your legs right  out on top of the chair in front of you, and the story made absolutely no sense what so ever.

Leaving the exhibition centre we had the Royal Mile and all its shops to navigate once more before we arrived a few hours later at the Edinburgh Castle for a proper walk round tour of the keep and its various museums it houses.

Although not as high as the top of nearby Arthurs Seat, Edinburgh Castle never-the-less stands an impressive height above the rest of the city, with an almost perfect view of its surroundings, and imposing walls that seem to be grafted on the very rocks themselves.

Indeed, from an architectural point of view, the layout and construction plans of the castle was an incredibly impressive feat in itself and definitely worth of much praise.

The castle also boasts several museums, including its own dungeons that still echo with the voices of its numerous inmates, lovingly recreated using diaries and captain logs left by prisoners of the time.

Considering the time period in question, assuming that the recreations were realistically anything at all like they were at the time then we all felt that the conditions were extremely comfortable for prisoners, and most likely better than the hovels of many of the city’s poorest denizens of the same period.

As a brief rest stop, we decided to rest our weary feet in the castles Royal Tea Shop, where I thought we may as well treat ourselves and ordered us a surprisingly affordable round of refreshments.

After wandering around the museums until the castle closed, we nipped next door to the Camera Obscura that was reported to be the city’s first and oldest tourist attraction, and one of only a handful of such cameras in the world.

With great glee, the camera operator took us through a twenty minute talk on how it operated, and then demonstrated its optical illusion by using a piece of card to lift a passing pedestrian off the street and then putting them back down again.

For a few hours more we went from level to level, sampling some of the most bizarre and mind melting optical illusions, including the maze of mirrors and the rotating mirrored walkway where the only way to walk it safely without feeling you are about to fall off the side is to close your eyes.

It was a very impressive display of illusions, camera tricks and optical oddities, not least was the cardboard dinosaur that’s entire head would follow you around the room so that no matter where you looked it appeared to be staring right at you.

Although Suesan was not that hungry, by now Saul and I were famished and so I took the easy way out by ordering a Chinese takeaway to be delivered to our room, and not only did it come with free bottle of drink but the helpings were plentiful and could have fed a family of six easily.

Day 7

With another full day booked ahead of us, we ate our breakfast and left the guesthouse bound for the docks as we were starting off this morning with a trip to the HMY Britannia, one time floating home to our current monarch and the one place she stated she and her family could truly relax away from any prying eyes.

Another bus saw us eventually arrive at the pier and docked Yacht which was slightly dwarfed in size by a nearby docked cruise ship but of course nothing could really dwarf the majesty and importance of the craft itself.

Being a floating museum, a lot of the areas of the yacht were roped off to the public, and the way to access the lower levels was to return to the jetty and use the set of giant metal stairs connecting the craft to the shore.

Although initially I had set aside a couple of hours for viewing the vessel I soon realised that I had not allowed sufficient time for a complete viewing by half, and so after an obligatory round of tea and scones in the Royal Tea room we fairly briskly skipped through the lower levels and regrettably had to skip the lowest engine level entirely.

That said, thanks to the remote audio guides that we were all issued with, even though we did not linger enough to fully explore every nook and cranny I feel that we did get a lot out of the experience and would highly recommend it to anyone who had even a fancy for boats.

Next on the itinerary was a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens, one of Suesan’s most anticipated attractions, and one that we almost missed as the bus driver that took us back to the city centre forgot that we had asked to be let off at the nearest stop to it, and so not only did we travel further than we needed to but then we had to backtrack on foot for quite some distance.

Despite being geographically a small site, the gardens were a place where Suesan could probably have spent the entire holiday slowly discovering and not got bored once. For Saul and I all the walking was beginning to tell, and though we enjoy nature, clearly it was not to the same scale that Suesan enjoyed it and so while Saul and I went off looking for a café Suesan continued round the inner recesses of the gardens glass houses.

With the glass houses divided into separate environments and all kept at specific levels of heat and moisture, so it was possible to have a dessert next door to a rain forest that was itself next to a giant pond with vines and triffids in abundance.

Though not exactly the very last guest escorted out of the gardens, we were again pushing the opening times to the max, and with a few hours to go before out Ghost and gore walking tour of the city so I thought we could use it to explore a part of the city we had hitherto neglected yet was where we were due to go for an all you can eat restaurant the following lunchtime.

Going past a pair of giant metal giraffe sculptures I spotted a Spanish restaurant and as I know that neither Suesan nor Saul often frequent tapas bars I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to sample one of the better restaurant chains.

A couple of platters later, and we had a nice variety of starter and main dishes, enough to give them both a real taste of Spanish cuisine, but as I feared none of us could stomach more than the tiniest nibble of mature stilton, and I really do wonder why they even bother serving it as part of a mixed platter!

As today had ended up being an almost non-stop walking fest, I asked the Suesan and Saul if they minded us skipping the Ghost and Gore tour, and thankfully they didn’t so a little earlier than planned we all caught a bus back to our guest house and let out feet recover in preparation for the final full day of Edinburgh city.

Day 8

This morning was devoted to our appreciation of ecclesiastics, as after a small breakfast we headed into the city centre in search of a cathedral or two, as we had passed our nearest one twice a day every day on our journey into the city centre and we felt that it would be a crime if we did not at least step in and pay our respects.

Thus it was that, apart from pausing to pick up a children’s cookery book with recipes from all around the world, we first visited St Marys Cathedral and then St John’s Cathedral, and were given a brief historical introduction to both sites by their caretakers.

Unfortunately we did not time our visits to coincide with either of the cathedrals morning services, and though we had previously read and heard a lot about St Giles Cathedral we somehow kept failing to spot it, and so with time pressing on we gave up in search of the fabled Cathedral and instead went to our all you can eat open style restaurant at Cosmo.

Suesan had previously been to such a restaurant before, and had done her best to describe to us what was in store, but even once I was inside it was still strange to see row upon row of food dishes, aware that each row was filled with a dishes from different countries.

Having all had light breakfasts, we did our best to make the most of the all you can eat restaurant, but despite our best efforts the venue was still trollying out yet more dishes when I felt that if I tried to consume even a wafer thin mint I would first have to unbutton my trousers and shirt a disrespectful amount.

Next up was a trip to the Edinburgh Dungeons, and here was an interactive scary experience that I was sure both Suesan and Saul would enjoy and I was not wrong.

With its curators all dressed up in costume and play acting some of the best pantomime performances you could hope to see, we were found guilty by a mad judge, had our insides ripped out by the torturer, almost poisoned by Burke and Hare, almost eaten by the Sweey Bean cannibal family, witnessed the head of William Wallace come back to take on the army of King Long Shanks and finally executed by being dropped and hung in a brief amusement style ride.

In addition, Suesan was a witch that was sentenced to burn, I was the reluctant boyfriend of one of Sweaney Beans cannibal daughters and Saul gave loud and enthusiastic directions to all the guides as the tortured and terrified us in equal measure.

As a parting spot of fun at our expense we were directed to the exit through a mirrored maze that actually had no exits until they felt that we had been wandering around aimlessly for long enough, at which point they finally shifted a couple of movable inner walls and let us escape back to street level and of course the gift shop.

As time was pressing once we hopped back on the bus we did not really have time to take a full look around Edinburgh’s Zoo, but as it was barely a few hundred meters away from our guest house I felt it would not hurt to at least take a peek inside, which was about all we had time for before it too closed its doors.

Not that this was the end of the day, far from it, as I had truly kept the best until last, as knowing that Suesan is a Jazz fan and both her and Saul love boats and cruises, so I had booked us on a three hour twilight cruise around the bay of Edinburgh, that set off in a few hours’ time, just long enough for us to rest up and pack up the car so that we could have an early start in the morning.

Going back to the Queensferry felt like a bit of a waste of time, as we had been here before, but I had to remind myself that timings of everything had been carefully scrutinised to get the very most out of every day and that if I could have fitted in anything else then I already would have.

Taking the car to the pier at South Queensferry was a lot easier the second time, as we already knew the route, and  we timed our arrival to perfection as it was just about to allow its passengers to board when we pulled up and parked.

On board, we found that we were the youngest on board by a good couple of decades, including the party of elderly Danish ladies that took a shine to young Saul and repeatedly asked him to dance throughout the night.

Not that Saul was shy of the attention, and indeed both he and Suesan were more than willing to get up and boogie until the food arrived. Strangely no ladies asked me to dance, but then that is probably best as I have always had two left feet and unless I at least a little drunk I would rather sit through a French written exam paper than get up and dance in front of the public.

So, while I snapped away with my camera, Suesan and Saul merrily danced, pranced and sung their hearts out and on the way back I could not but feel a huge sense of accomplishment as the pair of them were grinning from ear to ear.

When we got back to the guest house, I settled the bill and we finished packing the car all ready for an early off in the morning.

Day 9

Sadly today we were due to leave the place that we had pretty much fell in love with form the moment we arrived, but in order not to let the holiday blues start too early I had ensured that we had one last hurrah to experience before we hit the highway back southward bound.

The final trip was to the Deep Sea World Aquarium in North Queensferry, which we drove to and arrived a few minutes before it opened, a first for the entire holiday, but an understandable one as it didn’t open until 10am and we had to check out just after breakfast at 8am.

Unlike the smaller aquarium we passed through on our way here, this aquarium was huge, boasting the largest water tunnel in the UK, the largest collection of captive tiger sharks in the UK, but most of all was that several of the feature species has feeding times where the public could not only watch but assist in, which was music to young Saul’s ears.

I honestly think that Saul would not have hesitated for a second in climbing into the main tanks if they said that it was allowed, but as it was the fully dive suited young ladies would one by one take out the various animals and after a brief talk let brave members of the public hold or touch the safer fish and snakes.

It was the perfect ending to a great holiday, and on the way back we were so thoroughly tuckered out that we barely remembered to pause in the first and last pub in Scotland for a drink, and it was miles after the turning for the ancient ruins of Lindisfarne that I even remembered that I had planned on asking Suesan if we could make the stop off and at least take a few pictures even if we couldn’t reach the actual site because of the tides.

Knowing that we would be able to rest and relax fully once we got home, there was no need for a midway stop off on the way back, though I did request that we stop off at the local chippy once we got back as by then I would be hungry again, but I just couldn’t see either Suesan or myself up to cooking until the morning.

We pulled into the driveway just as the sun was beginning to drop below the horizon, and not even having the energy to unpack, we just headed on up to bed and gave ourselves a proper and well deserved early nights sleep.