Edinburgh Topography

 

A New Years walk along the Fife Coastal Path offered this perspective on our home town of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth.

To the left is Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano that looks like a recumbent lion. Next to that are "The Salisbury Crags"  This escarpment was quarried for building material for neighbouring  Holyrood Palace in the 1300s. Quarrying continued until .banned by Act of Parliament 1831..

The next feature is Edinburgh Castle, only visible because of the weather conditions, highlighting it in front of the Pentland Hill massing to the right of the picture. The Castle sits atop a volcanic plug.  When the ice sheet moved across this landscape from right to left the volcanic plug persisted and left a ridge a mile long tailing off behind it: the High  Street or Royal Mile, as can be seen from this vantage point.

I have since come across a reverse view I took recently.  In this case Fife is across the water in the distance.  The Royal Mile from Castle to Holyrood is the backbone of Edinburgh Old Town.