Climbing Arthur's Seat

Arthur's Seat has been likened to a sleeping dragon or lion

How many capital cities have a mountain in the middle? Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro…..and Edinburgh. Rome might have its seven hills and Paris, its Montmartre but Edinburgh has eight hundred and twenty three feet of basalt towering over it, topping its volcanic siblings of the Castle Rock and Calton Hill.

Arthur’s Seat, likened to a sleeping dragon, is named after the legendary hero of the Goddodin, latinised to Votadini by the Romans and praised in poetry by the Welsh bards as the “men o’ the north”.  Arthur's surname was said to be Pendragon.

Iron Age ramparts can still be seen on the subsidiary summit of Crow Hill. and the crows are still there.

 What attracts them to that bare hill-top and has done so for centuries, long enough for folk to call the place after them? It can't be food or shelter. A puzzle.

The hill is a Marilyn (Blog 12/09/16) and an easy climb up to its summit affords magnificent views of the city, Auld Reekie of Robert Fergusson’s verse.

On a warm spring day the coconut-Malibu scent of the whin bushes in full flower filled the air with the hweet-hweet of the chiff-chaff as an accompaniment.

The summit was as busy as Princes Street with the chatter of a dozen languages as selfies were taken to be posted on social media proclaiming the achieving of the top to the entire world.

Edinburgh with the Forth Bridges

The views are great. The Pentlands hills to the south and north, across the Forth, to the Lomond hills and the Fife coast. The island of Inchkeith and Inchmickery lie off-shore with the Isle of May a smudge on the horizon.

Across the Firth of Forth

Dunsapie Loch and down the coast

 Eastwards, down the coast, the cone of Berwick Law, another volcanic plug, is easily seen (Blog12/09/16) and the white cap of the Bass. 

Edinburgh Castle

Westward lies the city with the Castle on its own craggy height and below, Holyrood Palace and the Scottish Parliament.

Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament and the Calton Hill

On the way down, a wee diversion took me out to St Anthony's chapel perched on its own promontory above St Margaret's Loch. This and Dunsapie loch were created from boggy marshland in Victorian times.

The chapel seems to have been built as early as the 13th century possibly to take advantage of the local use of a traditional healing well nearby.

Edinburgh lassies would wash their face with the May Day dew to enhance their looks as recounted by Robert Fergusson in his poem Auld Reekie

On May-day, in a fairy ring,
We've seen them round St Anthon's spring,
Frae grass the cauler dew draps wring
To weet their een,
And water clear as crystal spring
To synd them clean

Surely a hearking back to a time even before St Anthony's chapel, to the time of Arthur and the sleeping dragon that is Arthur's Seat.

A grey heron stalks the waters of St Margaret's Loch

 From the chapel, a shady path gave me a chance to watch the bird life on the quieter end of the loch then back to the car and off to visit the Grassmarket with its grisly history of which more anon.