“Auld Reekie” (Edinburgh’s nickname)
After my visit to Glasgow in September 2017, I followed up a couple of months later with a visit to Edinburgh. In the absence of any immediate prospect of European travel at the moment, my post this month recalls my visit there. I again apologise for the lack of photographs to illustrate this post, but I had not planned to write about it when I made my visit to Edinburgh.
Tuesday 28th November 2017
Once again I had utilised a seat sale to bag bargain first class tickets (costing just £29 each way) from Virgin East Coast (as the train company was then called). My departure was at 08:00 from London King’s Cross. Arriving in plenty of time at King’s Cross allowed me to use the First Class Lounge until my train to Edinburgh was ready for boarding.
Unfortunately I had been allocated a single seat at the very end of the First Class coaches and as the train was quite full, I could not see a suitable alternative to move to. This seat had two disadvantages. It was adjacent to the toilet, so I was occasionally disturbed by people standing by my table while waiting for the toilet to become free. Secondly, I was furthest from the train’s food preparation area. This meant I had a long wait to be served breakfast and when it did come it was cold. I was not very impressed with the first class service provided (compared with their west cost counterparts a couple of months earlier), but even worse was to come on the return journey. But this could not detract from the views as we sped north – I particularly like the view from the train of Durham Cathedral, the crossing of the Tyne in Newcastle and the Northumberland coast.
I arrived in Edinburgh just before 12:30. From Edinburgh Waverley station I walked to my first stop the Scottish Parliament Building in Holyrood. As well as looking round the general exhibition areas near the entrance, I also looked in on the public galleries of the main parliament chamber and of a committee room.
After about an hour at the Scottish Parliament I left and walked up the Royal Mile to St Giles’ Cathedral. After examining the interior of the cathedral I descended to the crypt where I discovered there was a cafe, which I utilised to have a bowl of soup as a late lunch.
My next stop was The Mound, headquarters of the Bank of Scotland. I had previously visited this building for meetings a number of times during my working life, but the reason for my visit today was to visit the Museum on the Mound, devoted to the history of banking and money. I even managed to win a chocolate while I was there by successfully cracking a code to open a demonstration safe.
I then walked down the hill to the Scottish National Gallery. This has an interesting, but relatively small, collection of international and Scottish art, including Sir Henry Raeburn’s Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch. I finished in the Scottish National Gallery in time to visit a few of the many second hand bookshops in Edinburgh, before heading to check-in at the hotel that I had booked for the night.
In the evening I visited a restaurant in the ‘New Town’. After dinner I tried to find a pub for a quiet postprandial drink, but the first few I tried were packed full and it took a little while before I found one with a spare seat.
Wednesday 29th November 2017
After breakfast in the hotel, I set off for the short walk to Edinburgh Castle. It was bitterly cold this morning, with a heavy frost still on the grass in Princes Street Gardens. I reached the castle shortly before its 9:30am opening time and once it did open I could skip the queues to buy tickets and gained free admission by using my English Heritage card.
In its time Edinburgh Castle has been a royal residence, a military garrison and a prison. There was a lot to see and I was still there when the one o’clock gun was fired. The current gun is a modern artillery piece and is fired every day (except Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day) when the time ball is dropped at the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill on the other side of Edinburgh. For those unsuspecting tourists wandering about unaware of the gun, I observed that the loud explosion caused some of them to literally jump.
In the afternoon I visited the National Museum of Scotland. This was considerably larger than I was expecting and provided information not only on the history of Scotland from prehistoric times to the present day, but also natural history, science and technology and culture from around the world. It was difficult to do it justice in the time I had available, so I primarily focussed on the Scottish sections. I eventually had to drag myself away in order to catch my train home.
I needn’t have rushed to Waverley Station, as shortly before my 16:00 departure to London was due to leave, it was announced that it had been cancelled. Fortunately, there was another departure due to depart half an hour later, but at its due time that train still hadn’t arrived and I began to wonder if it was cancelled too. It eventually pulled into the platform and by the time everyone had squeezed on board it set off late. Unfortunately, there were more people booked into First Class than there were seats available. I was lucky – I sat in a supposedly reserved seat (my reservation being on the previous cancelled train), but nobody came to claim it. Others were not so lucky and many in First Class had to stand. The First Class staff on the train did nothing to help and just hid from their customers. They only appeared when numbers started to reduce upon leaving Newcastle – so no food or drink was served up until then. I was not very impressed with the service on either of the legs of the journey – six months after I travelled on this trip, Virgin East Coast handed back their franchise and the service was effectively renationalised. There were further delays on the journey south between Newark and Peterborough, so I eventually arrived at Kings Cross over one and a half hours later than I intended. This meant that I was entitled to a full refund of the ticket price of the return leg of the journey – consequently my entire return first class trip to Scotland, including free food and drink, cost just £29.
Europe Explored 