We've just returned from our weekend in Edinburgh - down by train on Friday afternoon and back this morning. Our apartment at The Edinburgh Residence (http://www.townhousecompany.com/theedinburghresidence/) was very nice. We were in the basement of a large property in the New Town, with bay windows and a door leading out to the street. Well located at Rothesay Terrace - a bit nearer Haymarket than Waverley.
We walked down to Stockbridge on Friday evening and, after a beer, walked along to the Loon Fung restaurant which we last visited over a decade ago - it's a favourite of Jo's pal, Anne Mason. Very nice it was too.
Saturday was pleasant enough, although nowhere near as warm as they were having it back home in Aberdeenshire where a new Scottish temperature record for March was set yesterday. We walked up to Frederick St and found a nice first floor cafe for brunch. In the afternoon, we decided to head for the Water of Leith walk which stretches all the way from Leith to Balerno. We would be joining it about a quarter of the way along at Dean Bridge.
It was a very pleasant start to the walk but it soon turned sour when we had to leave the peace of the waterside and cross the main road, round Murrayfield and then along towards Saughton. It wasn't helped by a couple of diversions to the walk route, caused apparently by work on the infamous Edinburgh tram system. We also got stopped - twice - by the Police. Nothing we had done wrong, but there was some major incident and they had roped off a large area of Saughton and weren't letting anyone in or out. We've subsequently discovered it was a murder - check http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/news/301506-death-of-man-in-park-treated-as-suspicious/
We were pretty fed up by now and considered quitting - the walk wasn't anything like as nice as we had believed it to be. However, we decided to carry on for a bit - we managed to pick up the trail again after being choked by fumes and drowned out by heavy traffic around Chesser Avenue. The trail took us round an allotment - I've never seen one that was so heavily fenced off and with barbed wire at the top too - there seemed to be more security here than at nearby Saughton Prison!
The prospect of a quiet pint in the Diggers seemed even more alluring now but we finally made it to the Water of Leith Visitor Centre (http://www.waterofleith.org.uk/centre/) at Slateford. Refreshed by tea, coffee and some of the chocolate that Lucy sent for our birthdays, we set off on the next leg towards Colinton Dell and Juniper Green. What a transformation! All of a sudden, the walk took on a complete new look - quiet, wooded - just as we had hoped. Time for a photo stop:
This also gave me the chance to rest my leg. My right knee was playing up again - I really can't walk pain-free any distance nowadays - especially on hard surfaces. It'll be interesting to see how I get on with this summer's golf - I managed OK last year, but the surgeon told me at the time of my arthroscopies 18 months ago, that I would need to have the right knee replaced fairly soon. The complication I'm concerned about is that, because the injury happened 42 years ago and wasn't fixed properly at the time, I've been compensating for it ever since, and the X-rays clearly showed how bowed both my thigh bone and my shin bone now are - that's what causes the pain. I wonder if there's any clever shoe/insole technology that would help alleviate this? Suggestions on a postcard please.
We did make it to the end of the walk - and I kept my usual track of the stats - although I missed a bit in the middle when I forgot to re-start the app after pausing it!:
I knew that Balerno was in the foothill of the Pentlands, but I didn't realise that we had climbed over 500 feet - not a lot in the great scheme of things, I know, but we just didn't notice any climbing at all - it all seemed fairly flat.
Balerno High School was at the end of the walk. the following picture of the stairs leading down to the school doesn't do it justice - it looks a very smart school indeed - and, in a different life, children, this is where you would all have gone:
Balerno High Street was the next stop in our nostalgia trip:
It wasn't pedestrianised in our days there - 30 years ago! Jo insisted we walk up the hill to the Post Office - just as a wee reminder to Kelly, who used to accompany her Mum there to collect her Child Benefit each week - and she always got a sweet treat for it - Kelly, that is!:
We had a couple of beers in the Grey Horse then took the bus back in to Edinburgh, with the mist fast descending. We got off near Rose St. and looked for somewhere nice to eat. The Abbotsford is a nice pub but I didn't realise it had a nice dining room above it - that was the clincher - good beer and nice, linen tablecloths:
Sunday tales to follow.
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