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.

An Edinburgh Circuit

 Yesterday we found the weather was good enough for our "town-country walk".  The view below would have our home in the middle of it - if it wasn't for the Craiglockhart hills in-between.

The walk is inside the Edinburgh bypass but feels like the countryside because of the Braid Hills. These are the foothills to the much larger Pentland Hills range which starts on the other side of the ring road and cast an evening shadow over Edinburgh's southern suburbs.  To the north is Edinburgh Castle Rock and Arthur's Seat and the accompanying Salisbury Crags, evidence of volcanic activity in a bygone geological era.

It is not all ridgewalking by any means.  There is farmland to meander through and woodland too at other stages of the circular walk around the perimeter of the Mortonhall and Braid Hills  Golfcourses.

A veritable escape from the hustle and bustle of the Christmas shopping (on Amazon).