Life, travel and sunshine

There are many Scottish words for very Scottish weather. Dreich, in a single word can summarise conditions which would otherwise require multiple adjectives to accurately describe the misery of the day. Yet, as it turns out, there are no Scottish words for the wonderfully Scottish evening I find as I step out onto the street and start my walk towards the park.

The slight pinkish haze in the air and the balmy glow play back drop to the calmness that descends on Edinburgh at this time of day. The cars move at a polite pace and the grey clouds move towards the edges of the sky, opening up a mild blue at the centre to let the sun glimmer through. Birds sing in the green trees which line the streets of closed shuttered shops as I round the corner. And there, between the buildings I spy him, Arthurs Seat, sitting proudly in the middle of his city, surveying us all. He’s brown on the edges with a green skin of grass and yellow trimmings of gorse.

Joggers overtake me where the pavement narrows for Queen Mary’s old stone bathhouse, “whether it ever contained a bath is unknown” says the plaque. Dead daffodils fill the royal garden, their trumpets now brown, their stems starting to fall.

Cars slide leisurely by as girls chat and boys play in the water pools, the cherry blossom blooming, I cross the road and feel the softness of the earth beneath me. As I turn to start my ascent up the Crags I glance back over my shoulder to be blinded by the sun silhouetting the city.

My heart starts to pump as I climb up the cliff, above the Parliament, the Palace, the Calton Hill Greek misadventure, my thighs start to work as the sharp sheer drop of the Crags falls away beneath me and I look out over this magnificent city.

A misty glow rests above the waters over to Fife and gently hangs in the streets and over the buildings. North Bridge is busy with buses and a train pulls into Waverley Station below the heart of the capital, the only thing at eye level, the castle, standing on it’s extinct volcano.

The clouds hang motionless in the sky, the air perfectly still, the sun sinking down behind the clouds where it beams out orange above and deep dark red below, settling into that red slit in between the clouds before sinking deep into the earth. The street lights start to flick on, joggers and cars still circle the park as the city starts to settle in to the rhythm of long Scottish summer evenings.