Edinburgh

Tony, Eny, Luke and Paul stayed with us in Harrogate for the night. Jacqui and Steve took us out for a sumptuous Italian meal and much merriment was had by all. After breakfast the next day, we took in most of the sites around town and then made the midday train to Edinburgh, via Leeds. The train was a mad house and our reserved seats were taken due to a cancelled earlier service (what a surprise). We drank all the Fosters on board, then all the cold beer available, which was all very humorous until we arrived and discovered our accommodation booking had fallen through. An hour or more later we were able to secure a small but clean apartment. The hospitable owners, Karen and Andrew, went out of their way puting us up given that it was late in the day.

The next day we took in the majestic Edinburgh Castle, where we gazed upon the Honours and pondered the Destiny Stone. Afterwards, we ate “stovies” in a little pub where Luke was reunited with his long lost look alike (brother?). All the while the intermittent precipitation fell on us as it would do so for all but 3 days whilst we were in Scotland.




Half of our third day in Edinburgh was spent in an Internet café searching for an automobile to suit our particular specifications: 6 adults with too much luggage. In the end we found a 7-seater Renault but had to leave some bags with a friendly newsagent next to the apartment. Weisie was fortunate enough (and small enough) to be granted the honour of riding in the luggage hold for entire road trip and to the surprise of all did not lose her sense of humour (nor did she lose any sleep as she snoozed her way around the country amongst the bags, stirring only for meals).

On the third night in Edinburgh, we joined an Auld Reekie tour on which we were positively scared out of our wits. Although Luke would not admit it, he actually held my hand when the lights went out.

Our first stop in our newly acquired vehicle was the enigmatic Rosslyn Chapel in the town of Roslin, a few miles south of Edinburgh. Roslin has been a particular fascination of mine since the first of a string of alternative/revisionist “historians” wrote a number of popular books about the place. Roslin featured relevantly, although somewhat fancifully, in Dan Brown’s recent bestseller. My interests, however, have been the St Claire family’s connection with the Templars (some of whose traditions are probably the precursor to modern Freemasonry).

After a couple of chilly hours in and around Rosslyn Chapel we piled back into the car with an audio tape of the Da Vinci Code, which we listened to for a few days until we discovered one of the tapes was missing! We resorted to purchasing a paperback copy of the book and took turns reading aloud, which was most amusing. However, the prospect of not finishing the story before the trip ended forced us to buy another (complete) set of audio tapes. The trip around Scotland was all the richer having listened to the adventures of Professor Langdon and Agent “I am not a princess” Nuevo.