Post It from Edinburgh CC site, Edinburgh, Lothian, Scotland. Thursday 17th October 2013.
On our way from Forfar to Edinburgh we stopped off to visit the Royal Palace at Falkland (second photo along), a favourite place to visit for the Stuart’s and once home of Mary, Queen of Scots. James IV built it in 1500 and it was a beautiful home although only part of it is still standing today as it suffered a fire when Cromwell’s soldiers occupied it. The chapel was particularly beautiful as were the Kings and Queens bedrooms which have been recreated. To our surprise we found a tapestry from the traders of Hull adorning the bedroom wall of the King. It had been made around 1890 so a little bit of East Yorkshire was there in the palace.
Before we left Forfar I had bought one last Forfar Bridie to share with Sharon for lunch and we ate it at Falkland. I shall always remember it because despite it being very tasty it broke a piece off one of my molars! During lunch there was a wedding about to take place in the village church and the groom was dressed in full Scottish kilt regalia, as were many of the male guests we saw walking to the church. As we ate lunch we had the pleasure of listening to a piper who was getting warmed up outside the church for the arrival of the bride.
We arrived at the camp site to the north of the city at Silverknowes, almost on the coast of the Firth of the Forth and it was well located for accessing Edinburgh via the busses. The bus stop was only 8 minutes’ walk away now that a new path had been constructed and you could get a day rider ticket for £3.50 allowing unlimited travel.
The site was as you would expect of a Club site with all the normal facilities and standard of cleanliness, albeit showing its age a bit now and in need of some new bulbs for key lighting areas that were on order. The one big disappointment was that despite being only one pitch away from a Wi-Fi aerial we could not access the internet. When you consider that this is a site in a capitol city that must surely attract many international visitors what an embarrassment it is for the Club to not have internet access from the pitches. Once again we were told the company providing the technology were supposed to be fixing the problem but when they visited recently they could do nothing because they did not bring ladders long enough to reach the workings! It sounds like Laurel & Hardy, doesn’t it?
On one occasion I did manage to get some internet access from the information room by the reception but when I tried again there was no access to the internet which meant planning and booking the remainder of our journey could not be done online. I enlisted the help of Sue Davis, one of the Wardens, who was extremely helpful and she amended and booked all the remaining sites for our tour to enable us to visit some additional NT properties when they were open and stop off at York.
Unfortunately we did not get one good night’s sleep during our stay as every morning starting at 5:50 a.m. the departing planes from the airport flew almost over the site and even the silicone ear plugs I use could not keep the noise out so I was awake every day from that time and Sharon also suffered.
During our 6 nights stay here we did many things, visit all the shops in Edinburgh, obviously, but we also visited a Georgian House NT property designed by Robert Adams in the New Town built in the late 18th Century. Gladstone’s Land, another NT property once owned by a prosperous merchant in the early 17th Century in the Old Town. It was a tenement building and the various rooms showed how life was 400 years ago.
We walked along the Royal Mile and other streets of the Old Town, visited the Scottish National Museum with spectacular views over the city from its seventh floor viewing area. Visited the National Art Galleries, the salad lunches in the portrait gallery were excellent, and we completed a 9 mile return walk along the banks of the Forth to Leith where the Britannia is berthed at the Ocean Terminal. The promenade is accessed down some very steep stepped paths through the trees immediately opposite the camp site and the grassed open parklands below are a paradise for dog owners. The tarmacked path is also very good and then you follow street paths from Granton to Leith but you can catch a bus that way to the centre of the city as well if you wanted to visit and not walk. We even caught a bus to IKEA on the outskirts of the city so Sharon could buy some specific items as our nearest one to home involves a 150 mile round trip.
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Edinburgh, the last time we had stayed there was 34 years and 3 months ago when it was the final place we stayed on our honeymoon tour of Scotland. The city had not changed much from memory but on this occasion we did get to see much more of it. A big bonus was we never got wet really, yes it spitted a bit whilst we were out but we always managed to fall lucky and be back at the camp site when it did rain. As we arrived home on the final night the rain started and became quite heavy, continued into the night and we unfortunately set off in the rain for Berwick upon Tweed this morning. Ah well at least we shall have internet access there?
Regards, Roy
