Edinburgh and Vancouver from the Top of Arthur's Seat
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THE VIEW of Edinburgh from atop Arthur's Seat.
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By HARRY McGRATH
There are several different ways of ascending Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano that forms the backdrop to Edinburgh. Today I take the road less travelled which begins at the north east corner of Holyrood Park, a couple of miles out of the city centre.
Picking my way through a vast whiting of bread-fed swans, I follow a path round St. Margaret's Loch and then scramble straight up the steep side of Whinny Hill. I pass the ruin of St. Anthony's Chapel from where the Knights Hospitallers of St. Anthony of Leith are said to have put lights in the tower to welcome ships arriving in the Firth of Forth.
This precipitous scramble takes me away from everyone else and soon I am walking alone across the ridge of Whinny Hill with only the occasional peewit flying up from the ferns and angling away on the wind. On the main trail in the valley below a multi-coloured caravan of walkers pick their way along while behind me a large black cloud is scudding across from Fife.
Anticipating a soaking, I descend the other side of Whinny Hill, cross the main trail and choose the straightest, and therefore steepest, path to the top of Arthur's Seat to get there ahead of the rain. The wind is keening, though, and the cloud accelerating and half way up I get caught. Not rain and a soaking, but hail and a thrashing.
The last leg is through a narrow gully in the rock until, buffeted and battered, I haul myself up onto the main path near the summit and into the company of the walkers I spotted below, all sensibly attired in rain suits of many colours. I stand with them by the cairn shivering in my t-shirt and sweat pants.
This is the spot to which James Hogg's character George climbed in Confessions of a Justified Sinner. On a beautiful morning he saw "the little wee ghost of a rainbow" in a cloud which soon took on the dark and malevolent look of his brother but "dilated to twenty times the natural size." When he turned to flee, he tumbled into the flesh and blood of his brother and a violent altercation ensued.
As an antidote to Hogg's terrifying vision, there's always William McGonnagal, Scotland's worst poet, who described Arthur's Seat in his poem Edinburgh:
Then, as for Arthur's seat,
I'm sure it is a treat
Most worthy to be seen,
with its rugged rocks and pastures green,
And the sheep browsing on its sides
To and fro, with slow-paced strides,
And the little lambkins at play
During the livelong summer-day.
Today there are no sheep but the hailstorm has burnished the air and there is a crystal clear view in all directions. Hard to believe now that Edinburgh was once christened "Auld Reekie," meaning smoky or smelly, because of the thick fog produced by coal and wood fires and the odours emanating from the open sewers that once afflicted the city.
The "evening effluvia of Edinburgh" upset Samuel Johnson when he was here. "I smell you in the dark," he said to Boswell as they walked together up the High Street.
Some of what I can see from the summit of Arthur's seat would have been familiar to Boswell and Johnson. The High Street stretches away towards the castle. But there is evidence of contemporary developments as well.
The Scottish Parliament building lies immediately below and the new National Museum of Scotland is just visible to the west. Stretching south towards the Borders, new housing developments attest to the number of people who are trying to escape extortionate city centre house prices.
Looking east I can pick out the port of Leith, now renewed with waterside cafes and pubs and apartment buildings stretching out from the shore, apparently built on mudflats. A cruise ship is berthed waiting to take passengers to the Mediterranean and beyond.
At one time Scots left from Leith under very different conditions and headed for Canada. One such journey is the subject of We Sailed from the Port of Leith on the 4th of July, by Vancouver poet Aislinn Hunter. In it the emigrants are awakened with a cry when they pass John O'Groats and watch until "that night we lost sight of Scotland."
From the summit of Arthur's Seat, I think about the way in which the people not only lost sight of Scotland, but Scotland lost sight of its emigrants. Over the centuries a separation developed which was not only physical but psychological. Gone and too often forgotten. This "emigrant gap" is something the new authorities in Scotland would like to bridge.
The last time I hiked to a point that I could look down on the city from which I started was in Vancouver. The trail I ascended was mapped and explicated by Scottish couple David and Mary Macaree whose pioneering work resulted in the original edition of 103 Hikes in South Western British Columbia.
Few people realize that Vancouver and Edinburgh have been twin cities since 1977. It is a relationship that is yet to be explored in any meaningful way, but it is one with the potential to create links between two thriving cities and, in the process, reduce the distance between Scotland and some of its emigrants.
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