Walking Edinburgh’s Union Canal Tow Path

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Edinburgh, ratho, scotland, union canal, viaduct

On Saturday, I crossed part of an interesting walk off my Scotland Bucket List. Leaving from Fountainbridge, I walked 14 miles of the Union Canal getting as far as Broxburn.

Looking at the map, I thought I would have gotten a lot further – at the start of the day, I thought I would make it to Linlithgow without any trouble. The distance was a little deceiving. Things always seem a lot closer on the map.

Unusually for Scotland, the weather stayed fairly dry for the whole day. Most of Edinburgh was inside watching the Scottish Cup Final so I definitely felt like i was doing something different.

Near the start of the walk, around Harrison Park, there were loads of people playing with their kids, running, and walking dogs. Once I got past Hermiston Gait though and crossed over the motorway I would see other walkers very rarely.

There were more cyclists than walkers as I got further out, which is probably what I would do if I wanted to go all the way to the Falkirk wheel along the canal.

The whole thing is a pretty impressive piece of engineering. Its very narrow and shallow in places, but you have loads of bridges and these massive viaducts including a very high one at Slateford that passes over the Water of Leith.

When it was first built in the 1820’s, it was mainly used to haul coal and other freight. The narrow canal boats were pulled along by the current and horse power.

Nowadays, the remaining boats are more recreational. A few people even live on them.

I don’t know if I would be able to do but it seems like a pretty idyllic life – you can choose to berth wherever and if you don’t get on with your neighbours or just want a change of scenery you travel a few miles upstream. People in the UK have some really romantic ideas about their canals, but in reality I don’t think many really take full advantage of them.

Around the 1930’s, the canals fell out of use as freight moved to railways. Cities like Amsterdam have tens of thousands of people living on canal boats, but in the UK its definitely a smaller scale, more rural thing. I saw a fair number of these boats berthed in Ratho but its not on the same scale that you’d see in Europe.

Initially I was hoping to stop their for a bite to eat, but I discover that the Bridge Inn was fully booked up for a wedding.

Before tiring myself out, I managed to cross over a couple more impressive aqueducts, and was able to do some plane and train spotting from the same part of the canal. About a mile and a half outside of Broxburn, the canal goes right underneath the Edinburgh Airport Landing Path, which coincidentally is very near one of the two Edinburgh-Glasgow rail lines.

You can see the Ratho viaduct in the distance, which is also a not too shabby bit of engineering.

By the time I got to Broxburn I was thoroughly wiped so decided to forego the last 10 miles to Linlithgow and catch a bus back to Edinburgh.

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Visiting Pitlochry

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blair atholl, blair castle, bonnie dundee, jacobites, killecrankie, perth, perthshire, pitlochry, scotland

This past weekend, we took an overnight trip to Pitlochry in Perthshire for a little exploration and adventure.

I’d heard good things about it but was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more to do. The village is very tiny – you can walk from one end to the other in a matter of minutes. The buildings are beautiful and the whole place is filled with hotels and very picturesque. We even had dinner and drinks at the Old Mill Inn. We ended up going for a walk on Saturday and enjoying a little of the countryside. There are some pretty fantastic views within a short walk.

Getting up in the morning, we passed a group of two dozen cyclists – there was literature at the hostel highlighting some of the cycling trails nearby and bike shops in town. We hadn’t made plans to go cycling, so ended up catching a bus to the nearby Blair Castle and Gardens.

I think I’ll do a later post about the castle because it was pretty packed full of history.

After finishing there, we took a walk around the grounds. It was a little strange actually because a lot of North American trees were planted including some big Douglas Firs and California Redwoods. It almost felt like I was walking through a forest  back home.

On the edges of the grounds was the old kirk, resting place of Bonnie Dundee, the Jacobite general immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in the famous folk song.

Bonnie Dundee by the Corries

Bonnie Dundee, aka the Bluidy Clavers, actual name was John Graham 7th Laird of Claverhouse, was a professional soldier, close friend of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and military leader of the Jacobite army. He died at the Battle of Killecrankie which was fought nearby. It was an important victory for the Jacobites, but also a costly one.

Without their leader, Killecrankie was followed up by a major defeat nearby at Dunkeld.

From Blair Castle, we walked backed to Blair Atholl, and then went on to the Killecrankie visitor centre for lunch before starting a hike back to Pitlochry. There was lots of information about the battle including a few interesting sights along the way. Like the name suggests, Soldier’s Leap is the place from where a retreating government soldier leaped from the rocks into the river below to escape pursuing Jacobites.

The railway viaduct was really impressive, and we passed a high bridge with a bungee jumping platform. Its weird because its something I’ve wanted to do for a while but have really got around to.

Lots of people were taking advantage of the outdoors. People were fishing, biking, walking their dogs, and it was a good six mile walk from the visitor centre to Pitlochry. Luckily we had some decent weather to do it in.

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Hilarious…public outcry overturns City of Vancouver Engineering Department’s Bagpipe Ban

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bagpipe ban, bagpipes, music, pipers, scotland, Vancouver

The ban was so quiet that even the Mayor didn’t know about it until he was questioned by reporters. An award winning piper was informed about it when he tried to apply for his busking license and was denied.

Apparently, the city engineering department had received noise complaints from some particularly non-musical residents and decided the only solution was an outright ban. I’m not saying that there are not two sides to every story, but there is a time when you have to ignore noisy residents and business owners and let common sense prevail. The story is more about bagpipes, however, all percussion instruments were included in the ban, so its hard to figure what kind of reaction city staff were expecting.

As a current Scottish resident and former Vancouver resident, I’ve become a fan of the bagpipes. Its not everyone’s taste, but Vancouver staff could have easily avoided the controversy all together by resolving those complaints with measures short of a ban or just telling those people making the complaints to go culture themselves a little bit. I tolerate all the awful top40 that some of these people like, so they can probably learn to tolerate a few drums and bagpipes for the sake of having a city that is culturally vibrant and musically diverse.

The most newsworthy thing about this incident is how long it took for staff to realize what anyone with common sense could have told them. From the very beginning of the ban, this was only going to go one way. Mayor Gregor Robertson asked staff to examine the ordinance after reporters asked him about it (he couldn’t outright contradict them in public), then it was overturned a few days later with vocal support from other Canadians of scottish descent.

Its good to know that there are still some people who are determined to make Vancouver look like a no fun city.

Foraging at the Edinburgh Botanical Garden

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botanical garden, breakfast, Edinburgh, edinburgh botanical garden, Edinburgh International Science Festival, foraging, scotland, wild food

As part of the Edinburgh Science Festival, Aarti and I went to a foraging workshop and breakfast this past weekend – completely her idea but I enjoyed it immensely.

Originally, I was not so keen on having such an early start on a Saturday morning, but as I started to wake up a bit more I began to get more into it. The event was at the Edinburgh Botanical Garden. A foraging expert and a local botanist toured us around while pointing out edible plants along the way and giving us some pointers about how to identify them in the wild and also how you’d prepare some of these things in your own kitchen.

I guess the event was pretty popular because there were more than 60 people there by my count. They broke it up into two groups to make the logistics a bit easier.

The forager who showed our group around was named Miles Irving, he’s the author of A Foragers Handbook and has supplied some London restaurants with foraged food.

I was interested to hear him explain about how much of his plant knowledge is self taught.  I don’t have much experience with botany, but I think it would be difficult to learn so much of that on your own – especially since misidentifying something could make you really sick. There was a botanist also who seemed to know the Botanics really well; he also knew the latin names for most everything which was slightly intimidating but I felt like we were in good hands.

I don’t think I’d want to forage for all of my meals, but you can see that there are some definite health benefits to such a lifestyle. I find it very easy to recognize that foragers consume a far greater variety of nutrients and have a more protein rich diet than the average person.

A lot of that local plant knowledge is a mystery, and its refreshing to see a few people trying to reintroduce us to those foods that were a dietary staple for such a long time but had been largely forgotten since we all started going to Tesco’s.

Probably the most memorable thing was the birch tree which had been tapped a couple days before the event. Apparently, there is only a few weeks out of the year when you can tap one (usually end of March, early April) but during that time they can produce huge quantities of sap. I can’t remember exactly what they planned to make with it, but I think they said the plan was to make syrup or honey or something like that.  I remember a couple Maple Syrup commercials that showed them tapping the Maple trees in Quebec, but I never realized there was such a small window of time for this to happen.

The breakfast that followed was really nice but Aarti and I felt a little bit jipped because they ran out of muffins before we got to the buffet. They had these venison sausages from a butcher in Portobello that were incredible and there was also porridge served with wild berries, an egg pot with mushrooms and some special potato cake with herbs. All made at least partially with foraged ingredients.