sweet fuckery i hurt. i just climbed a mountain. a snow-covered mountain, no less. it's funny - we all have these things we want to do before we die. climbing a mountain was never really on my list, but now i've done it i think i'll add it anyway. it was only a little mountain, as far as mountains go - 251 metres in total. my trusty (and heavy - have i ever meantioned heavy?) Lonely Planet guide said that it was an easy walk. an hour or so. but i'll bet you the coffee i'm drinking those fuckers never did after a night of bloody snow.
a quick break to demolish my 2nd breakfast and i'm back, finishing off the coffee (which is good... so good). i'm sitting in The Rabbie Burns - it being the first place i found that looked like it had a decent lunch. in my mind, All Day Breakfast counts as lunch, and their version of the Big Breakfast included haggis so it had to be done. that, and it's warm, dry and there arev nice eastern-eurpoean women who seem more than happy to bring me coffee while i sit here feeling like i've just been beaten up and pissed on by excited Welsh rugby supporters (there was a lot of piss on the streets. i was informed that it was because the Welsh were in town. no love lost there then...).
i was on the street at 9AM. my alarm had gone off before 8, and of course got snoozed - my hand found it before my eyes rembered how to open and instinctively hit the right button. sleeping in a smallish dorm room with 8 or 9 other people left me better rested than i had expected - i passed out not much past midnight and apart from the creaking of the metal bunks as people shifted in their sleep, none of them were noisy or irritating. a quick shower later (and a MUCH better shower than back at base-camp) and i was shovelling toast, cereal and coffee down my throat, got tooled up and headed down towards the hill. Arthur's Seat is at the top of the highest mountain in the area and affords incredible views of the countryside. of course, right after the snow the air's far from clear. not foggy, just not clear, so i don't think many of my photos came out too well. still, for all the sore legs getting up there it was worth the view. coming down was quicker, but treacherous. i wound up on my arse at least twice, and i know i got air on the third slide, breaking the fall on my side. i got up swearing, pondering the relative entertainment of trying to get some laundry dry, imagining just how grubby i was going to wind up and wondering how the fucking hell the two old people ahead of me with walking sticks weren't just keeping pace, but making distance on me (no - seriously. how did they not slip and brek their fucking hips?). one of the benefits of being up a snowy mountain with very few people around was that when nature called, i did finally get to write my name in the snow. hoorjay!
eventually i fetched up back on level ground again and trudged back up the Royal Mile towards Edinburgh Castle. typically, the Mile is UPHILL to the fucking castle which is why i started assessing anything that looked like a relatively budget eatery on the way. this isn't at all the area for cheap food. welcome to Edinburg's Tourist Central. there are kilt shops and bagpipe shops and Historical Taverns so densely packed that if you tripped over one you'd faceplant in the next. still, it's pretty and entertaining. i'll pick this up again later this afternoon/evening.
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another 4 hours later, another interesting location. right now i'm sitting in a basement scotch whisky bar with a shot of something lovely in a glass that looks like it was designed by craftsmen intent on ensuring that i enjoy its contents as much as humanly possible. it's less than 50 metres from the gates of the castle and had a sign above the door saying "The Scotch Whisky Experience" and somehow i knew i had to go and check it out.
after leaving The Rabbie Burns i
OOH FUCK, MY THROAT IS IN HEAVEN! IT'S LIKE A BURNING SLUG OF HAPPINESS!
sorry, anyway, i continued up the hill to the castle. i'm not going to go into the details of the place. come here. go see it. it's pretty, it's old, it's got a lot of history. i did the tour, which i recommend if only because it's free (well, after you pay the £10 entry fee), it runs every half an hour and you'll pick up a lot of useful information which comes in useful when you start to wander... and the view's spectacular.
i wound up hanging around there for the best part of 3 hours looking around all the little nooks and crannies of the place. by the time i left i was getting towards ruined. another long day with a LOT of walking (climbing, falling on my arse)
OOOOH IT'S SMOOTH, IT'S VELVETY, IT'S LIKE SOME SCOTTISH BASTARD LEARNED HOW TO TRAP JOY IN A BOTTLE!
erm... yeah. tired. sore. getting REALLY sore now, and i've still to do the cemetery tour i missed out on last night. plan of attack for the moment is to sit around in this little bar for a while longer and try something else. at £3.50/shot it's not the cheapest way to spend an afternoon, but they have nearly 300 different bottles of scotch on the wall and a lot of them i'll not get the chance to taste without spending over $150/bottle somewhere out in the world. that, and the bar attendant has a gorgeous accent and knows her stuff incredibly thoroughly.
hmm... note to self. find a single malt tour. probably best done from Inverness. i should get the chance to finish this off later tonight.
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a chair in the bar downstairs from the hostel, my drink's changed to Guiness and i'm hearing american accents from the groups of people doing the pub quiz. i'd be in on it... in fact, i'm almost a little disappointed that i didn't pay attention to the signs saying it was on, but what the hell. i did the cemetery tour instead.
i bogged out of the whisky bar after having another shot and chatting to the bar attendent for a bit, getting some suggestions on out-of-the-way pubs to visit while i'm here. i wandered off and found one of them down on Cowgate and wound up having a couple of pints cruising the net. there was no "Free WiFi" sticker that i noticed, but their wireless router had pride of place, hanging in an ornate birdcage over the left-hand side of the bar, so i settled into one of the big, plush couches and drank local beer (which tasted oddly of peat) and cruised the net while i ate, catching up on the news from back home. i still read The Age, The Australian and (when i'm really bored) the Sydney Morning Herald to find out what's going on back home, otherwise i'd never know about the $950 K-Rudd wants to give me for Anzac Day.
anyway, fortified by my 3rd big meal of the day and happy from the two pints with which i'd followed my scotch i wandered back to the hostel to dump some stuff and have a bit of a sit down before wandering off to the ghost tour, which was also good fun. the guide for this evening was actually from Wollongong. she was trying to cover her accent with a bit of an english one, but her aussie kept shining through. it was fun, informative, theatrical, and i got a couple of pounds off the price because i'd gone along to the Vault tour the night before and had missed out on doing the cemetery last night.
i hiked back to the hostel through the wet, dark streets of Edinburgh's Old Town feeling exhausted. it's not that i covered a lot of miles today, but the place is hilly. REALLY hilly... compared to anywhere i've walked around before at least. the Old Town's also completely riddled with alleyways. as the buildings were built they just left bits out. some of these Closes are wide enough to drive a car down. one i walked down this evening was narrow enough that if someone had tried to pass me we would have had to both be pretty friendly. walking down one of these wet cobbled streets with insufficient lighting is actually really spooky, although that could have had a lot to do with the spooky tours i've done these last two nights. the Royal Mile which runs between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Castle (royalty lived in the one at the bottom of the hill, and came up to the one on top of the hill when they had to. links two castles, a mile long, not a very imaginative name) seems to be built along a ridge, and if you turn off in either direction you wind up heading down quite a steep slope. it would probably partly explain why i've not seen any fat people around since i got here (or in the local parlance: thaat be whah arve nae seen noo faht people in Ehd'nbraa). they burn it all off walking up and down the bloody hills.
still, ignoring how demolished i'm feeling at the moment (the litany goes as follows: sore chest and shoulders from my shoulder-bag, right bicep for some unknown reason, both knees, quads and calves, right palm from using it to break my fall on the mountain, feet from wearing these boots for 14 hours now and, of course, walking all fucking day) today's been good. i've extended my stay here for another 2 days since i got a 2-for-1 offer and it cost me the same as booking only for a single night. watch me complain - even if i do leave on wednesday it's not as if it cost me any more and i'm a fan of having flexibility.
tomorrow i think i'm going to go fairly easy... although i'm tempted to walk to the coastline directly to the north so that i can dip my toe in the North Sea. i probably won't get the chance at Inverness since it's on Loch Ness. still, while i don't mind trudging for miles on end i'm not climbing any more snowy fucking mountains for the next few days, i'll say that much. i'm relatively certain that my body is going to exact a penance upon me for my exertions today come tomorrow. i'll have a shower before bed tonight in an effort to appease the physical shell, but it's going to hurt one way or another and it'll take some work to get me moving again in the morning. still, another pint should help with the sleeping process. that would make... um... 4 today, plus scotch... but that was only tasting sizes so it doesn't count, right?
oh well. it's 11PM now and i've about had it so i can see an early night in my future... at least, once i finish my fresh Guiness...
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