Day 15. Edinburgh/ Pebbles – Sep 23rd, 2013

Today we visited Scotland’s capital Edinburgh. In Scottish Gaelic it is known as Dùn Èideann, from which stems the name of the city on the South Island on New Zealand. The last time I was in Dunedin, New Zealand was on Robbie Burns birthday, January 25th. Our coach driver suggested that there may have been a King Edin.

We departed the hotel in fog at 08:45 and for about half an hour there was little to see. Then the sun burned through and there was magnificent Kodak lighting. We were in fact to drive over the coal fields of Lothia, and there was a King Loth. While there is still lots of coal, the government has deemed it uneconomical to extract. This has caused a massive shift in the economy of this area.

Edinburgh, known affectionately as Old Reekie, is Scotland’s second biggest city. Like Rome, it is built on seven hills, the difference being that the hills here are old volcanic plugs.

There followed a parade of famous names who hail from Edinburgh, among them Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sean Connery, Robert Louis Stephenson, Sir Henry Rayburn, Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and John Knox.

By the time we pulled into Charlotte Square with a statue of Prince Albert on horseback, the sun had departed.

We passed a statue of William Pitt the Younger, the one who introduced a temporary Income Tax.

By1867 the old town was too small so they started building seven new towns. The first one had innovative names for the principal streets such as Princes, George and Queen.

The style is Geogian. A basement level for the servants and then three storeys for the household. The totally symmetrical buildings were faced with cut sandstone. The doors were a bit wider than usual so that the owners could be carried through in sedan chairs. We paused outside Alex Salmon’s office at number VI on the square, with a policeman standing guard.

We drove past the home of Dr Simpson. He performed chloroform experiments on his guests after dinner to determine the correct dosage according to body mass. He called chloroform his magic vapours.

Then there was the Balmoral Hotel where J.K. Rowlings holed up to write the last part of the last volume of Harry Potter.

We were off to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia. There had been a royal yacht since 1660. Britannia was built by the John Brown Shipyard on the Clyde in Glasgow in 1952.

The yacht was used by the Royal Family, but also for trade missions and other duties. For example, one thousand were evacuated from Aden. In war, the ship could be set up as a hospital ship to handle 200 surgical cases.

It was a honeymoon ship for Princess Margaret, Princess Anne, Prince Charles, and Prince Andrew. All those marriages ended in divorce.

By 1997 the Admiralty had to face the fact that it could no longer afford Britannia. Other royal yachts had been scuttled at sea, but Queen Elizabeth vetoed that idea. Bids were solicited and Edinburgh won over Glasgow. The ship was put into the Britannia Trust and moored in the harbour of Leith.

By 10:40 we were on board doing self-guided tours using a push-the-button narration handset.
It was the third time I had been on Britannia.

The ship visit was over by noon and we continued our guided tour of the city. We drove past Holyrood Palace, the official residence of the Queen in Scotland.

Overlooking Holyrood is a park that sits on the volcanic plug. It is kept in a natural state and affords good views of the city from its top. We could see way out into the estuary of the Forth, where there is a perfect volcanic cone marking its entrance.

James Hutton, the father of modern geology determined that the volcanoes were millions of years old.

We saw the rather modern Scottish Parliament building that cost 431 million pounds. The design is controversial.

Greyfriars Bobby pub celebrates the famous dog named Bobby who spent years pining at his master’s grave.

By 13:05 we were at the top of the Royal Mile, that connects Holyrood Palace to the Castle. We were released for lunch and shopping duties until 15:15 hrs.

I walked uphill to the entrance to the castle to take a couple of photos. There was a huge construction crane taking down the bleachers from the tattoo.

The red lion crest on the castle gate read, “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit”, which I translate as “Nobody Strikes Me With Impunity”.

Back down on the Golden Mile a kilted bagpiper wanted one pound to have a photo taken. I passed. Instead, I got rid of my last Scottish bank note buying a fridge magnet that featured a kilted piper.

Note to self: Do NOT bother to bring sun block to Northern England or Scotland.

We were back at the hotel by 16:10 and I started packing.

At 18:30 we gathered in the bar for farewell drinks. At 19:00 we were piped down into the banquet room and were entertained during dinner by a fiddler and guitar player.  After dinner the more adventurous tried some dancing.

Day 14. Tweed Valley/ Pebbles – Sep 22nd, 2013

The Germans went to the polls today. It would appear that Angela Merkle will have another four years as Chancellor.

This is the heart of the Scottish Borders Region. The Peebles Barony Castle Hotel, where we are staying, is located 17 miles south of Edinburgh, in the village of Eddleston, close to Peebles. Steeped in history, this 72 bedroom 16th century tower house offers facilities as a hotel, conference or wedding venue. It includes 25 acres of Peeblesshire countryside.

But the hotel has an interesting past. After the Fall of France in May 1940 the castle of Blackbarony, which had become a hotel in 1926, was requisitioned for the use of the Polish forces stationed in Scotland, in particular the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade commanded by General Stanisław Maczek. The Polish forces in Scotland were entrusted by the War Office with the defence of the country’s east coast between Montrose, 61 km north of Dundee, and Burnt Island on the Firth of Forth against a possible invasion from German-occupied Norway. The Poles also assisted the defence of areas to the north and south, between Inverness and Berwick, by patrolling and guarding beaches, and installing tank obstacles.

We left the hotel at 08:30 with the aim of visiting several small towns in the Border Area. The list included Selkirk, Hawick, Jedburgh, Melrose and Pebbles.

The first history lesson was that Dr Beecham had rationalized the railway system in the 1960s by pulling up a lot of railway tracks north of the English border. In 2014 railway service will be restored from Edinburgh to Peebles to relieve pressure on tourism.

All day we played hide and seek with the clouds and the sun. For most of the day it was a very pleasant autumn day.

By 09:45 we came very close to Abbotsford as we wove a strange path through the countryside trying to work our way through a series of road closures for a bike race. Of course you will recall that Sir Walter Scott had a house in Abbotsford.

We visited Selkirk several times as every road we chose ended in a diversion sign and we had to try another route.

We got to Harwick, the home of Cashmere, by 10:30 only to find out it is pronounced Haik. Being Sunday morning, all was closed so we just went for a short walk.

A pattern was fairly obvious. In the Borders, wherever there was a small river powerful enough to turn a watermill, then a mill had been built and row housing constructed for the workers. Steam replaced water power but now most of the mills have shut down.

My travelling companion figured out that our Glaswegian driver pronounced the word Borders as if it had three “R”s in the middle and two at the end.

From 11:20 to 12:00 we visited the ruins of Jedburgh Abbey near the River Jed. By the way it is pronounced Jedboro. I was tempted by a stuffy animal toy in the inevitable Gift Shop called the “Hairy Haggis”. We moved to the opposite end of town for our lunch break, that just happened to include the Jedburgh Woollen Mill and an Edinburgh Woollen Mill. I wound up with two golf shirts at ten pounds each down from fifteen pounds.

The next stop was Melrose Abbey, where the heart of Robert the Bruce had been enclosed in the walls of the abbey. I liberated a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the Co-op store.

By now the temperature was up to short sleeve levels.  We arrived at Traquair. House around 15:00 for a guided tour.

Dating back to 1107, Traquair was originally a hunting lodge for the kings and queens of Scotland. They hunted bears.  Later a refuge for Catholic priests in times of terror the Stuarts of Traquair supported Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobite cause without counting the cost

In the sixteenth century a significant extension was added onto the original lodge.

The house had a priest room on the highest floor, complete with an escape staircase hidden behind a false panel.

Mary Queen of Scots, who was six feet tall, visited in 1566, and noted that there was a brewery. After a couple of centuries lapse, the brewery is back in operation.

A copy of Mary’s execution warrant of 1587 was on display. In her bedroom there was a cradle in which she had rocked her son who became James VI of Scotland and James the First of England.

Twenty-seven kings have visited Traquair House.

In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie left Traquair House never to return.

We were given the entire history of the family of which I only remember that one woman had 17 children and lived to quite a ripe age.

There was a harpsichord on display, one of only three of its type in the workd.

After the visit to the house I wandered around the grounds to admire the pigs.

At 16:00 we drove back to Peebles and spent 45 minutes trying to find something to do as all the shops had closed. We were saved by a plaque showing that John Buchan had visited Bank House. In this house Anna Buchan ( 1877 – 1948) and Walter Buchan ( 1882 – 1953) had lived and John Buchan had visited as a boy. John Buchan was the author of “Thiry-nine Steps” and as Lord Tweedsmuir was a Governor-General of Canada from 1935 to 1940, dying in office. Since Peebles lies on the banks of the Tweed River, the link to Tweedsmuir is intriguing.

By the way, there are Atlantic salmon in the River Tweed, which the locals pronounce as Tweet. Unlike their Pacific counterparts they can make more than one visit to their natal stream.

We got back to the hotel by 17:15 and prepared for a much-needed calorie infusion at the 19:00 dinner.