We all slept in this morning then headed down for a hotel breakfast. As with dinner it was just the right price with the kids eating free. Speaking of money, no one told us that the Scottish pound is different – all bright and colourful. Just hope they accept it back in Wiltshire.
[Have since used a Scottish £10 to buy some packing crates at a discount store. Not the best place to try it! The woman just looked at the note blankly so I prompted her that it was Scottish. She continued to stare until I had to point out that it was still legal tender. Reluctantly she accepted.]
By 0930 we were out and about with our first stop the Royal Mile. Now for a bit of background information (naturally) before we board a hop on/off tour bus. The name Edinburgh comes from the ancient Gaelic "Dun Eidyn" which means 'hill fort on the sloping ridge'. The Royal Mile runs down the East shoulder of this once active volcano. It was 325 million years ago during an ice age that the immense pressure of moving glaciers carved out its profile.
With the Castle entrance in the back ground
The Royal Mile is actually more than a mile by 107 yards. It starts at the Castle entrance then, as you continue downhill changes name from Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street, Cannongate, and Abbey Strand which leads to Holyrood Palace and the end of the ‘mile’.
‘Modern’ involvement in the area came in 1124 when King David I took over the hill fort on the crag and the clachan or village which supplied goods to the noblemen, soldiers, and monks in the fort. Old Dave was immediately inspired to remodel what had become by 1128 the Burgh of Eiden. He granted trading rights to the township and the Lawnmarket became an open air trading market. He then went about setting out the High Street, which even then was referred to as Via Regis, which means the Way of the King. It is possible that this is where the name Royal Mile originates.
Grand timber buildings were constructed and named after the landowners and this tradition can still be seen today on the present Royal Mile. The gaps between the buildings are called closes after the 'dividing enclosures'. The enclosures had large gardens, which housed livestock. This medieval garden city was destroyed, its houses burned in 1544 by the English, during the period called the Rough Wooing. Henry VIII of England ordered its destruction because he was trying to force the Scots to allow his son to marry the infant Mary (Queen of Scots).
By 1591 the houses were mostly made of stone but the overcrowding conditions were becoming increasingly unsanitary, although within the Cannongate the nobility were living in grand mansions with lovely gardens. By 1645 things were far worse with as many as 70,000 people living within the Royal Mile. Some buildings were fourteen stories high and there could be three hundred people living in one block with up to ten people sharing a single room. It wasn't until the end of the 18th century that street cleaning was organised. In 1770 the ‘New Town’ was established but we’ll talk about this later in the tour.
As planned we caught one of the many tourist buses to have a better look around the city. As luck would have it ours was fitted with Horrible Histories commentary so the kids were set.
Did you know that in ye olde highland games one of the events involved twisting the legs off a cow (we assumed it was a dead cow but who knows!)
Our first bus tour took us down the Royal Mile towards the Salisbury Crags then looped back up Abbey Hill and down Regent Street where we alighted at Waverley Bridge. The whole route was a trip back in time but I must confess that having lived so close to Bath, the sandstone buildings didn’t pack that much of a punch.
The original building of Royal High School, which is, by one reckoning, the eighteenth-oldest school in the world, with a history of almost 900 years. Historians associate its birth with the flowering of the 12th century renaissance. It first enters the historical record as the seminary of Holyrood Abbey under the reign of David 1 in 1128. The Royal High School is still alive and well in its current site at Barnton and is naturally chokkas with history!
The Salisbury Crags with the science exhibit “Our Dynamic Earth” in the foreground (I put my foot down and refused to visit, perhaps still scarred from the Eden Project!)
The Salisbury Crags are a series of 46-metre (151 ft) cliffs at the top of a subsidiary spur of Arthurs Seat, which rise in the middle of Holyrood Park. They were named after Lord Salisbury who used to come and visit every now and then – with his army in tow of course.
The Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence in Scotland of Her Majesty The Queen. The Palace is perhaps best known as the home of Mary, Queen of Scots, and as the setting for many of the dramatic episodes in her turbulent reign. Mary was married at Holyrood house and witnessed the brutal killing of her secretary Rizzio by her jealous second husband, Lord Darnley, in her private apartments. The Palace briefly served as the headquarters of Bonnie Prince Charlie during the 1745 uprising.
The Nelson Monument is a commemorative tower in honour of Vice admiral Horatio Nelson and is situated on the top of Calton Hill. It was built between 1807 and 1815 to commemorate Nelson's victory over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and his own death at the same battle
Edinburgh Castle (tomorrow’s adventure)
Waverley Bridge is the site of the city rail station and shopping mall but, more importantly today, the site of trampoline bungee! Both Zac and Abbey decided that they would happily spend some of their pocket money giving this one a try and I don’t think either of them was disappointed. Abbey was the first to be strapped into her harness and within one or two jumps was performing somersaults and other acrobatics with ease.
Zac was next in the air and while it took him a few more jumps, by the end he was also twisting and turning. I must say that watching the two of them attempting moves was highly entertaining. It was almost as entertaining as watching a group of teenagers rolling around on water in large balls like hamsters. It’s the little things in life!
After coming back down to earth, we wandered up past the Scott Monument to Market Street and the home of the National Gallery (did not even bother with the kids!). Three members of the family watched a street performer for a while then Abbey and I chose a small memento from a Celtic jewelry market stall.
Zac taking in the Scott Monument, a Victorian Gothic structure completed in 1846 in the memory of the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. Bill Bryson has described it as looking like a ‘gothic rocket ship’ and I must say he does have a point. It is, apparently, the largest monument ever built to commemorate a writer.
You may remember Scott in such quotes as:
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening
Caught red handed
To cut a long story short, the evidence against the pair was not overwhelming, so Hare was offered immunity from prosecution if he confessed and agreed to testify against Burke. Hare's testimony led to Burke's death sentence in December 1828. He was hanged on 28 January 1829, after which he was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College. The dissecting professor dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and wrote "This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head." His skeleton, death mask and items made from his tanned skin are displayed at the college's museum.
And all this without a Horrible Histories commentary! Great for keeping the little ones entertained.
Our tour next took us into the New Town where, sadly, once again living near Bath proved to dampen the impact of the sandstone buildings and cobbled streets.
In mid-1700s Edinburgh was a medieval jumble of tall buildings and narrow-winding streets at the foot of Edinburgh Castle. With a population of around 60,000 crammed within the confines of the city walls, Edinburgh was overcrowded, insanitary, and smelly (hence its nickname "Auld Reekie"). Livestock wandered the streets and chamber pots were emptied from windows above with a mere warning cry of Gardy loo! (from the French, "Prenez garde a l'eau!").
The partial collapse in 1751 of one of these tenements spurred the City of Edinburgh to finally address Edinburgh's deteriorating living space. In 1766, the City held a competition to develop 100 or so acres of city-owned land to the North of the Nor' Loch (now Princes St Gardens) as a residential suburb.
James Craig, the 21-year-old son of a merchant had the winning bid, with his the plan for a grid-iron system that we know today with the 3 main streets - Princes Street, George Street at the centre, and Queen Street running North-South with the two large, formal squares at either end of this cris-crossing streets - St Andrew's Square and St George's Square, after the then monarch, George III. The Square was renamed Charlotte Square after George's wife Queen Charlotte in 1785.
Did you know: the wearing of tartan only became popular after the visit of George IV in 1822, the first visit to Scotland of a reigning monarch since 1650. Sir Walter Scott’s organization of the visit included plaided pageantry and this elevated the tartan kilt to become part of Scotland’s national identity.
Home of Robert Lewis Stevenson
After the instigation of the window tax in 1696 under King William III (William of Orange) the practice began of bricking in windows. Thus comes the term ‘daylight robbery’
By 1300 we were well and truly ready for lunch so wandered down to Grassmarket, which, incidentally, was once a popular place to go and watch a few hangings. Nowadays it contains some great pubs and restaurants and we chose The Black Bull (purely based on table size). After a hearty pub lunch Nathan made the call that it would not rain this afternoon so popped back to the hotel to drop off our raincoats. The kids and I meanwhile soaked up the atmosphere of the area (actually they played their IPODs whilst I did a spot of people watching – love the accents)
At the pub then waiting for Dad at Grassmarket (no hangings today so had to make do with the IPOD)
Our next stop was the National Museum of Scotland where, amongst other exhibits, we were lucky enough to bump into Dolly the cloned sheep – did not realize she was Scottish. The museum was actually quite good though a little crowded today. We paid a flying visit to the natural history section and then tried to take in more Scottish history. Probably of most interest were the Lewis Chessmen, which were carved from ivory in the late 12th and early 13th centuries and were found 700 years later in the vicinity of Uig on the Isle of Lewis.
G’day Dolly
Yes, sometimes it did seem we were on another planet
Nathan with his favourite dinosaur
Loving some hands on history
Using a catapult to destroy and castle then placing a call to Sir Jackie Stewart, all in a day’s work really!
By this stage Abbey had hit the tourist wall and we were not far behind. We decided it was time to pick up some afternoon tea and head back to the hotel for a siesta and refresh ourselves for tonight’s big event.
Love that bungee jumping! Also the chessmen. Looks like a very interesting place.
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