Skip to navigation

Walking Land's End to John o'Groats with Mark Moxon

West Linton to Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle

Today never really got going, mainly because the schizophrenic Scottish weather decided to rain on my parade. If there's one thing that I'm tiring of, it's trying to cross exposed places like the Pentland Hills when the rain is driving, the wind is howling and the summer months feel a long, long way away.

Into Edinburgh

Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh
Princes Street Gardens

Today I headed north from West Linton, passing the Gordon Arms on the way to the Roman road to Carlops, from where a good quality path leads over the top of the Pentland Hills. Of course, the weather gods waited for me to reach the very top of the Pentlands before chucking buckets of cold water onto my head, and even though I've been through this plenty of times, for some reason I still fell for the oldest trick in the book. One thing you can't assume with rain is that it will simply go away, and telling yourself that it'll be all right and that you don't really need to bother with proper wet weather gear is a stupid thing to do.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle

Despite booking myself into a hostel the size of a small planet, I'm sure I'm the only English-speaking person in the entire place; either that, or everyone else from round these parts is equally stunned into silence by the amazing clash of Spanish, Japanese, Dutch and German that graces the corridors. I like this kind of cosmopolitanism – it's something you hardly ever find outside of large cities – but after two months of meeting mainly local people, it's freaking me out a bit.